Remove the windscreen and make a watertight model for 3d printing

Question

I have a STL truck imported, I have removed the side windows by deleting the glass faces and selecting edge loops and bridging. Works fine. Now I want to remove the windscreen. Is it possible?

Thanks

Side windows removed

Answer 1

After looking at the blend file: Yes, of course it is possible, it just requires some work and care. Just some hints on obstacles you may face and how to solve them:

The easiest are the large triangles in the front window - you can select them with Box Select, then press xor Delete and select Edges. However, you have to be careful not to delete the edges that merge into the chassis. It may even be easier to reconnect lost edges by hand affterwards. With the further edges it becomes increasingly more difficult: You may occasionally have to consider whether it is enough to delete edges, or whether you will then be left with flushed out points. In this case, the points are to be deleted first.

Always remember: undo is your friend.

At some point it may be difficult to select an edge without selecting things in the background - then it may be easier to move inside the truck and select those elements from the view outside, while not selecting elements in the background.

Now the really serious problems reveal themselves: There is this big gap opening between inside and outside of the cabin.

To close that gap I would:

1. (green) connect and fill the triangular shapes that occured by deleting the window
2. (red) remove some more of the long recengles inside the car , then subdivide the last line to something like the number of the triangles 3 (blue) then connect and fill these shapesall around the window. You will need at some points to create some new intersections.

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the other serious problem of the model is that the cabins ceiling is way too low for the window. Inside and outside don't match at all.

To solve that, i would select the ceilings part as shown in the screenshot, press g (for go or move), then zfor the z direction and carefully move the cabins ceiling upwards. Maybe scale the curving of the ceiling down a little bit - hit s (scale) z(for z-direction again), then 0.4 to scale by a factor of 0.4. have a look from above so that the inner ceiling does not move through the outer ceiling.

Again, stitch the inside and outside of the cabin together.

So you have to approach slowly, but with some patience it should work in reasonable time, and still much faster than remodeling ...

( I did parts of this process to illustrate what to do, but it's unfinished, and as you also did parts of the process already, i don't think it will be too helpful to upload my file - and you will learn more by doing it yourself)