I imported a STL CAD file, and what I want to do is form a small number (in the 10s) of discrete parts, so that I can attach bones and animate. I am new to Blender aside from a few tutorials so please excuse :) I am trying to animate a robot from a CAD file.
See image below. I want to join these faces/edges/whatevers together and call it the "base" part and then add a bone that will eventually be able to rotate the parts above it in the Z.

How should I go about this? Thanks!
P> Separate Selection that makes a new object from selection – Duarte Farrajota Ramos Jul 09 '17 at 22:22