Hi Colin,
quote: At the end of the day, what I really needed was to find some way of "thinking" that helped me remember what tool to use.
Solids = Booleans & everything else = Trim
Yup, that is a pretty good way to sort it out.
If it helps any, the way it really works is that both Trim and the Booleans have a lot in common in that they calculate intersection curves between objects and cut them into pieces.
In fact, booleans are basically like a kind of "batch mode" for Trim where they do the same job as Trim + select pieces to discard + Join the results.
It's just that they automatically pick which pieces to discard based on the relation of the piece to the different volumes, like Difference throws away pieces that are internal to the cutting object only, Union throws away pieces that are internal to all objects, etc...
It's possible to not use the booleans at all and instead use Trim + Join for everything, it's just less convenient because it will involve more selection picks to tell which pieces to throw away.
So if you have solids, the booleans just offer you a way to handle cutting more conveniently with less selection of individual parts needed, that's pretty much it...
But the added convenience is pretty nice though and can save a lot of time, so it is worthwhile to steer towards that direction when you have a choice about it.
- Michael |
