Hi Michael ...

I really like being able to highlight a face and then easily extrude it.

On the other hand, I would really like to also be able to move it (or extrude it) and have the 'boolean union' take care of itself so that I had one solid instead of two that need to be joined with an additional command.

When/if you have time and the inclination.

cheers,
eric

Hi Eric, yeah I've thought some about getting a kind of automatic boolean built into Extrude.

It is somewhat more difficult to implement than it might seem at first, for example I can't just automatically do a union because if you extrude toward the other direction it should probably take away material like a boolean difference instead of union.

Also I'm not quite sure if it will be necessary to have an option for turning off "automatic boolean" or not.

So I don't think it is going to work to squeeze it into the end of v2 here where I'm trying to wrap things up right now. But it is a good candidate for a v3 feature.

There are 2 situations that I'm thinking of - the first one is when you extrude a face sub-object like you are talking about.

Then the other is if you extrude curves which are all currently contained within a face of a solid, that would be another good situation to have some kind of automatic boolean function. I've thought a bit before about making this case with curves to be triggered if you had selected the solid in addition to the curves, that could be the signal that you wanted to have the result of the curve extrusion booleaned with the solid automatically.

- Michael

I think for sure there are times when this is not the desired result, so a tick mark for option would be needed.

Hi Michael ...

Yes, it would be great if there were options to allow for different conditions.

I sure did not think this could make it into V2 but it is nice to think it may appear in V3. It is a minor distraction to have to do a boolean after extruding a face in a simple lengthening or shortening procedure.

cheers,
eric

From using other cad packages there is usually a dropdown in the Extrude command window which has the operations for Boolean; None, subtract, unite, intersect.

Cheers

Hi Danny - the problem I see with that, is that some combinations wouldn't really do anything.

Like for example if you extruded something towards the outside to make a protrusion, but had it set to Boolean: Subtract, that would produce nothing since you would be subtracting something that is exterior to the solid.

Same thing if you extrude towards the inside to make a depression but had it set to Boolean: unite.

So I'm kind of thinking it would be better for MoI to try and automatically figure out if it was supposed to be a union or a subtraction, depending on which direction the extrusion is going... Also that way you wouldn't have to flip that UI setting around to different values each time you wanted to switch between doing a protrusion or a depression.

Is there some particular situation that you would see an automatic determination based on direction not doing the right job?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> Like for example if you extruded something towards the
> outside to make a protrusion, but had it set to Boolean:
> Subtract, that would produce nothing since you would
> be subtracting something that is exterior to the solid.

In that case a message would pop up and inform you that nothing happened.
It's usually a step by step operation, the Boolean selection would always be reset to 'None'
So it's usually, pick curves to extrude then the next step would be to pick the Boolean operation if wanted.

> Is there some particular situation that you would see
> an automatic determination based on direction not doing the right job?

Yeah, when you don't want a Boolean operation at all.

---------

Hi Danny,

> Yeah, when you don't want a Boolean operation at all.

Yup, but for that one there could be a checkbox like "Auto Boolean" or something like that so you could turn it off, rather than a dropdown with several modes.

Although for curves even that may not be necessary - I was thinking that with curves it would be possible to do a built-in boolean if you selected both a solid and some curves that were on a face of the solid when you did the extrusion.

Having the solid selected could be the trigger for that - if you didn't want for the boolean to happen then you just select only the curves and not the solid as well.

But that would not really work for extruding a face rather than curves, since you can't really select a face and also the whole solid that the face belongs to at once...


> It's usually a step by step operation, the Boolean selection would
> always be reset to 'None'

I see, but that means you would always need to be manipulating that UI setting every time you wanted to do one of these, that might be inconvenient if you wanted to do a bunch in a row or something...

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> I see, but that means you would always need to be
> manipulating that UI setting every time you wanted
> to do one of these, that might be inconvenient if you
> wanted to do a bunch in a row or something...

I don't find it an inconvenience, it sort of follows the natural flow of thought, "I want to extrude this string of curves...this direction... then I want to unite/subtract it to/from this solid.

What would happen in the case if the curves you picked were not closed ?

--------

> I don't find it an inconvenience, it sort of follows the natural
> flow of thought, "I want to extrude this string of curves...this
> direction... then I want to unite/subtract it to/from this solid.

Yeah, but what if it could be "I want to extrude this string of curves... this direction ... done".

Then you want to do another one - pick some other curves, right click to repeat the extrude command, pick the distance, and done again.


The way you are mentioning it here, it almost sounds like you're talking about an additional stage to the extrusion? I mean that after you pick the direction/distance, the command would not end and instead it would ask you if you wanted to do a boolean or not?


> What would happen in the case if the curves you picked were not closed ?

No boolean for that case I don't think - it would just behave the same as currently.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> I mean that after you pick the direction/distance,
> the command would not end and instead it would
> ask you if you wanted to do a boolean or not?

Well, it doesn't actually ask you for the next stage, all the options are in the one command window.
Almost like the fillet command in MoI, pick edge......input size.....type of fillet....enter

Anyhow, we'll have to wait until you implement the one step extrude/boolean command to comment any further.
Looking forward to it!

Cheers

>>>>But that would not really work for extruding a face rather than curves, since you can't really select a face and also the whole solid that the face belongs to at once...
>>>>

Or would it???? A special face selection drilldown like the edge drilldown that is in swing when doing the extrude.. Select a solid, then on hover the faces are selectable also along with the edges (some kind of rollover like a hatch or something). Only kicks in when auto-bool extrude is in play.

Too complicated?

Hi Burr,

> Too complicated?

Yeah, kind of complicated... I generally try pretty hard to keep selection working in a more uniform way between commands.

- Michael