Quick way of filling holes of imported STL meshes?

Support Modeling
1

Hi

I have an irregularly shaped sheet metal (with thickness) part (imported, can’t suppress the holes) in Solidworks which I then export to STL. This has a whole lot of screw holes and slots in it. The STL is triangulated and I was hoping to cover up the holes and just make them black (indication of holes is more than suitable).

So I have gone around and covered up these holes from both sides with faces and given them a unique material. But the two circular edges are still connected with faces, making it impossible to get a decent result from Dissolve Faces/Limited Dissolve. Is there a quick way to select the closest connecting faces? Some addon that can do this?

In the image I’ve selected the two new top and bottom faces with the new material, and I would like to automatically select the connecting faces (when all top and bottom faces are selected due to there being tons of holes).

BlenderSnapshot.png1589×1293 62.8 KB

2

Did you try Defeature in SolidWorks to remove the holes?

I have found Defeature to have limited usefulness, but have not used it myself to remove holes alone. Maybe its possible, maybe not?

3

Defeature is too late for this one, but I’ll keep it in mind for the next. Defeature isn’t something I need to deal with in my regular work, so I actually didn’t know about the feature.