Hi Tim,

Yeah, making a component that needs multiple Booleans and then duplicating it with
mirroring can save some time. You could also cut a ring up in small pie-wedges (going out from the origin)
if the section was complicated to Boolean and then array it around a ring and join up the surfaces.

I can think of one ring I did like that that turned out pretty good. It was an antique eternity band
with marquise stones and lots of little filigree that someone wanted in order to replicate their great-grandmothers ring,
which was all worn out. If I had to Boolean out all those little holes, I would would have had a melt down, if my CPU didn't first! ;-)

What do you use for your CAM program?

ArtCAM converts STL's to reliefs before it runs a toolpath,
so I believe thats the reason it can combine meshes on the import.

I'm not sure about the stuff over 0,0.
I have a script for Rhino3 that locates the lowest "Z" point of a model,
would that be what you mean? I use it to place the ground plane for a rendering.

You can assign a keyboard shortcut or an alias to 0,0,0 in Rhino as well,
if that's any help.

-Jesse