Delete one of the four sides of an extruded plane?

Trying to make a box that only has three sides, for a 3D printer. I’m not sure how to delete the conjoined sides of two extruded planes. Apologies for the noob question.

I created this by creating two planes, and extruding them up along the Z access. I think moved the one in the middle down to be flush with the other (which is why it looks like there is only one inner wall at the bottom of the object. Planning on creating faces to fill in the walls on the three sides (and adding another plane below it so it has thickness on the bottom), but I want to get rid of that “wall” on that bottom of this picture. A box with only three sides. But I’m not sure how to get rid of it.

Thanks for any help.


So far I’m thinking perhaps I can use a boolean modifier and use it to delete the unwanted side, although I don’t know if that has any impact on 3d printing it.

Um, select it and press X (or Delete)?

I would make such a box this way:

  • Create a plane.
  • From a camera-view that’s facing directly towards the plane, “Extrude” and then “Scale” the plane slightly, pressing XKey to constrain the scale to X-axis. Now, repeat this step, this time pressing YKey. Now, you have a plane with, so to speak, “a box around it.”
  • Now, from a side view, select the whole object and extrude it slightly along Z. (Use “ZKey.”) This creates the thickness of the bottom of the box, which after all has two sides (front and back).
  • Extrude again along “Z” to create the empty height of the box.
  • Now, extrude one more time, slightly, along the “Z” axis to create the depth of the top of the box.
  • With the camera now facing the front of the box, select the rectangle in the center of the top and delete it. Repeat this for the “back of the top” plane.
  • Now, you’ll notice that there’s an empty space on the inside of the top of the box, where the now-deleted top planes have been removed. Select the edges of each of these four empty spaces in turn, and press FKey to fill them.

Now, you have a box, of some height, with a bottom that has both a front and a back, and the center panel of the top removed.

You could knife cut, delete edges, merge vertices and such however 3 edges of the default plane extruded Z and Solidify modifier is all what’s needed to create this.

Hello WingedRyno,

Blender meshes are made of vertices, edges and faces. You can delete individual vertices, edges or faces by selecting them and pressing X to delete. Now, if you delete a vertex, you will also delete any edges that rely on that vertex as an end point. When you delete an edge, you also delete the faces which that edge forms part of the perimeter. If you decide to delete a face, it will only delete that face, and leave the edges surrounding the face, and the vertices, intact.

So, deleting a vertex is the most destructive thing you can do, because it takes with it any associated edges and faces.

Deleting an edge is less destructive, since it leaves the vertices and the end of the edge in place and only deletes faces that rely on that edge for a boundary

And deleting a face only deletes the face, but leaves both the edges and vertices intact.

Welcome to BlenderArtists :smiley:

Thank you all for the responses. I know it must get tiring answering such basic questions. Thanks again.