Suppose to going out but cant leave this alone :)

I going through what's been mention all ready.

I have punched out a rectangle (using boolean diff with rectangle curve) in my hallow tube but having issues with blending (connecting) the holes through the tube.

I have notices that I can't select all the sides in the punched hole in one selection, this might have something to do with it

Steve

Hi Steve - so in your last model there you've got an open surface instead of a solid.

What you probably want to do is to make it into a solid first before you actually cut the rectangular hole in it - one way of doing that easily with that shape is to select it and run the Construct > Planar tool, which will build trimmed planes through any planar openings and join them in to seal them off, then you'll have a solid.

Then when you do a boolean on a solid with a curve, the result will be a solid too - when cutting a volume the curve will basically leave behind the "side walls" parts of where it was extruded. This won't happen if you are not cutting a solid object.

Basically the booleans are kind of more oriented towards working with solids, you can also use the Trim command to cut things up as well in addition to the booleans, but booleans are kind of like a "batch mode" trim, where they not only cut things up but also decide which pieces to keep based on which volume the pieces are in, if that makes any sense.

So basically when doing booleans it tends to be easiest to be doing the boolean on a solid object as the base object instead of an open surface that does not define a totally closed volume.

Hope this helps!

- Michael

Hi Steve, also see here for another similar example:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1359.2

So note there that with the base object as a solid, when it is cut it results in the cut up pieces being solids as well - basically the side wall portion of the curve's extrusion gets incorporated into the model in that case.

That doesn't happen if you are cutting a non-solid object, because basically the curve gets punched out into an extruded surface and when your base object is not a solid it doesn't really know how to determine which piece of the extrusion is the outer part (sticking to the outside of the solid) versus which part is inside of it. When you're doing the boolean on a closed solid as the base piece, it's able to then figure out what pieces are outside the volume and what pieces are inside and that makes the side wall pieces come out as well.

- Michael

Thanks Michael,

It's slowly sinking in now :)

But just for argument sake, I wanted just to bridge that gap between the rectangular cuts I made in my open surface, could it be done.ie extrude the edges across and somehow join the points.

Or should I not go there.

""""""""""But just for argument sake, I wanted just to bridge that gap between the rectangular cuts I made in my open surface"""""""""

Select the model, then select all 8 edges of the 2 openings and choose Join from the edit menu. Be sure the 2 new squares are selected and run Loft.

Hi Steve, yeah if you wanted to construct the side walls manually from just those edges, you could do that by selecting a pair of edges at a time and then using the Construct > Loft command to build a loft surface between those 2 edge curves.

Then once you have build up the 4 sides you can select those sides and the outer piece and use Edit > Join to glue them together. Then since the other openings are planar the other ones can get filled in by selecting the whole shape and doing Construct > Planar to build planar end caps on those spots.

But basically you use Loft for doing a "bridge between 2 curves".

EDIT: Burr beat me to it again! :)

Burr's method is kind of more efficient because by joining the 4 edges into one curve you can then do just one loft between those curves.

- Michael

Free forming:

Pretty cool to see you cook this thing up, Burr!

Some audio too. ;-)

Hey Burr, some great stuff there, you've really gotten the hang of the "get the modeling done quickly" kind of vibe!

- Michael

""""""""you've really gotten the hang of the "get the modeling done quickly" kind of vibe!""""""""""

Well, I think thats what has come to be the norm, but I was refering earlier to "less effective". We always see some guy modeling a fancy car and say "WHOA!" and learn nothing about the software. I think the 3 tutes get glossed over, but they pretty much cover everything! I'm still not sure if I could make a good "training video".. I think sometimes when I slow down and start talking, I may be making it more confusing for someone who is trying to learn something. I think this may be the conundrum also. Someone like Grendel doesnt need to hear or see me say "First, I draw a construction line... This is a helper line for creating geometry", but may watch a few things blaze by and think, "Oh, that was a neat trick, I never used that like that before"... But someone learning the software would have to "Pause... Look.....Review help file....Pause...Return later....""" to understand the blazing video, but would benefit from "This is a construction line" type stuff...

Oh well. For now I can just illustrate something very specific, without much effort. I was trying to emphasis "solids" with that last one.

I was trying to avoid "Fixing" his "how do I cap this area" model and just show how a different workflow would make better results... If he would like me to cap his other model, I'll make that one also. (I'll speak in that one Majik!)

Hi Burr, yeah a training video especially targeted at beginners is a bit different kind of a thing. But I think that quite a lot of people also like to see other stuff as well, and something that just shows normal use can give someone a lot of ideas and help give a frame of reference for how just drawing things is supposed to look like.

- Michael

Wow thanks guys

The way things are going I'm going to end up buying this :)

Welcome to MoI Steve...

BTW, I am curious how many user around the world today using MoI ?

Hello,

It's like a speed painting tutorial, only with MoI.

Guys

I have created a simple model and wishing to connect the cylinder.

Now I know this is a candidate for the blend tool and it does works. However I having a brain block how to merge it into one object

Once I apply the blend tool, and attempt and boolean Union the cylinder still refuses to merge into one cylinder.

Steve

Hello Stever_uk,

After your Blend try selecting the three pieces and selecting Join.

Hi Steve,
Thats a "Join" with those 3 surfaces...

A boolean is geared towards having 2 solids that intersect somehow and creating a new volume by calculating the new intersections and removing the unwanted pieces. The Join is how various surfaces are "Glued together". If you have 2 surfaces with a shared edge, then they can be joined at that edge. With proper construction of surfaces, having all edges joined into a closed shape, creates a solid.

Hiya,

That's what I thought as they were faces. I do a join but I still see the two edges within the cylinder and thus don't believed they have have joined into a single object

??

Steve

When you select your object, look at the properties in the upper right corner:

Gotcha, ok so I have formed a solid

I was just expected the lines in the cylinder to disappear


Thanks for your patience :)