Hi Tim,

Just ask on the forum if you have questions about jewelry modeling in MoI, I may not have the answer, but someone will, so it will help others who want to learn, too...and then if enough jewelry designers ask questions, Micheal will know what tools to make for us! ;-)

I'm not sure if this is correct, but it seems that Boolean-ing parts in small groups seems to go faster (towards the end result) than doing them all at once.

Since many jewelry models are symmetrical, you can Boolean subtract things like azures for stones on one side of a ring and then trim away the other half of the model, slicing it right down the middle with a cutting plane, then mirror over the finished side and join them together. I've also build just a quadrant of a model and then mirrored or circular arrayed to complete it.

Another thing to keep in mind,- if you're CNC milling your models, Boolean unioning may not be required at all. I use ArtCAM which handles STL's that touch each other as one entity, so when you import the file to make a tool path,,it doesn't matter if the model was Booleaned unioned or just an assembly of parts before it was meshed.

Hope this helps.

-Jesse