Delete a face and close the gap

[mlugo-apx]

@henmedia, an idea I have not seen asked for yet, and I would like to build it if you would take it.

In Fusion 360 and SolidWorks you can click a face and delete it, and the faces around it grow to close the gap, so the body stays solid. That is how a fillet, a hole or a boss comes off again after the body has been joined or edited, without going back through the steps.

The CAD kernel can already do this: defeature in occt-wasm, which layerling uses in cadShell.ts to clean up slivers. I tried it on a few bodies like layerling's:

Body	Faces deleted	Result
Box with r3 fillets on the top edges	4	sharp box, 23,740 → 24,000 mm³
Box with a 10 mm hole	1	solid box, 22,429 → 24,000 mm³
Box joined with a 12 mm boss on top	2	plain box, 25,131 → 24,000 mm³
Box joined with a lower box at its side	5	plain box, 28,800 → 24,000 mm³

Each came back as one valid solid. Where the gap cannot be closed (a main side of a plain box), the kernel returns the body unchanged without an error, so the tool would have to say that the face cannot be removed.

Two questions before I start:

• A group is rebuilt from its parts, and the face numbers change with it, so I would make the result a fixed body, the way wrapping is applied. Is that acceptable, or would you want it kept in the group?
• It would work on layerling's own bodies only, not on imported meshes. Is that fine for a first version?

[henmedia]

@mlugo-apx, I like it, and yes, please build it. Removing a fillet, a hole or a boss afterwards is something people ask for, and your table shows that the kernel does the work.

To your two questions:

• A fixed body is fine. Please keep the exact body (the B-Rep), so that Fillet, Chamfer and the STEP export still work on the result, and make it one undo step.
• Own bodies only is fine for a first version. For an imported mesh the tool should say plainly that it needs one of layerling's own bodies.

For picking the face, it would be nice if it felt like the other face tools. And as with Gridfinity, the MCP action, the guide, the start page and the help question mark in the window belong to it. I am looking forward to it.

[mlugo-apx]

@henmedia, thank you. I will keep the exact body and one undo step, pick faces the way the Face tool does, and say plainly when a body is an imported mesh. I will come back with the pull request.

[henmedia]

@mlugo-apx, Delete face is out in 1.86.0, thank you for building it. Reload the page to get it; the installed app needs a restart.