Unable to use the cavity feature more than once

[sutarsh]

Hello

I'm trying to use the cavity feature to embed a curved mirror into a rectangular block. Ideally I'd have the edges of the mirror flush with the top surface of the rectangular block. However, when I do this, the oval part of the mirror remains and I don't want it to.

I thought a work around would be to do the cavity feature incrementally (start by not having the mirror fully flush, just partially in, then use the cavity tool to carve out a bit of the block, save the part, and then retry the cavity tool after pushing the part in) but this doesn't work and I get an error message about the part already having external references.

Is there a work around for this? Or an overall more elegant way to do it? I'm just trying to get a rectangular block with the curved mirror's surface into it. The mirror itself is exported from Zemax.

[matt]

The Cavity tool is really for making molds, and it's kind of quirky.

Use the Boolean tools, and I would do it as multibody part rather than in-context in an assembly. You could also use Intersect, although that's usually for more complex work.

[bradb]

In order for this to work properly to get the result you want, the top edge of the curved mirror has to be exactly coincident to the top surface of the block. If it is, when the cavity function is performed it will result in two entities, asking which you want to keep, or keep all.

Another way to do it is to put the curved mirror in a larger block so it's completely inside it, perform the cavity function, and cut away the material above to the top edge of the mirror.

Or the method suggested by Matt above.

[TTevolve]

Use insert part and a combine-subtract operation to cut it away (Like Matt said above). Seems to work better than the mold tools in my experience.