I had an idea on how to give some more control over booleans by being able to have a face sub-object selection before doing a union or difference. Then the boolean will only cut objects using the selected faces. It basically gives subset control over the boolean.


Here's an example - here are 2 solids, a hollowed out box and a separate cylinder object sticking through it. With just one face of the box selected and the cylinder selected:




Then doing a boolean union will only cut with that box face, making this result:




Here's another example, a thickened slab with spheres sticking out of it, the spheres are sticking out both sides but if you only want the result to go on one side, select just that face of the slab and the spheres, then a boolean union will do this:






And with boolean difference - here there are 2 vertical faces of the box selected (both the outer one and the inside one on the same wall):



Then boolean difference using the circles as cutting objects does this:




Here's another example, one solid like this:



And then a sphere sitting over top of it:



With just the cylinder face of the main object selected and then doing boolean difference with the sphere as the cutter:






Or with the inverse, all faces except the cylinder selected, then boolean difference:






It seems to be working well so I think it will be a new feature for the next v3 beta.


- Michael

It should make stuff like this more convienent - say you've got this thing:




And you want to make a handle coming off of it, instead of having to kind of carefully form the handle so it only sticks into just the side wall of the oval you can just make it stick through a ways:




Then if you select the outer face of the oval solid and the entire box solid:




Doing a boolean union will give this:




- Michael

A solid and a cutting line:



If just these faces of the solid are selected and then boolean difference with the line:



Only those faces get cut:



- Michael

Great idea! That would make a lot of stuff faster (even if it's already really fast to work in MoI3D)

I can see many uses for this Michael, especially in the jewelry sector. It will be a major time saver, and will make detailing a much easier process.

I like this idea a lot!

Martin Spencer-Ford

Michael,
In your hollowed out oval example, what happens if you do a boolean difference with just the outside face and the retangular thing? Does it create a hole in just that face?

Hi Michael,

Very nice addition to the Boolean set, from the screen shots it seems it'll save time not only in function also in modelling strategies.
I assume the regular Boolean function will still be in place?

-

Wow Michael! What an awesome "I shoulda had a V8" idea.

This is right up there with the essence of MoI's intuitive nature.
When I think about it, I'm always separating/re-joining and "pre-trimming" objects due to selective trimming issues.