Help with Drilling Holes in an Object

 From:  Michael Gibson
5130.2 In reply to 5130.1 
Hi YHWH_777, if you've already got the pattern that you want on that flat plane, the easiest method is probably to use the new for v3 Transform > Deform > Flow command that can wrap objects from one base line or base plane to a target surface, it's kind of like texture mapping an object.

The way that would work is that you would draw an additional plane under the plane that you want to morph, you then select the object you want to morph, run the Flow command, and then pick the base plane and then the surface to morph on to.

Also for bending something from a straight shape to a curved shape instead of using surface-to-surface flow you could instead use curve-to-curve flow which might be a bit easier for you to set up. To do that you would rotate your hole surface to be vertical and then draw a line underneath it, and then you can again use Flow and map from that line to the circular edge of the cylinder part, which will in effect bend your surface.

See here for an example of that kind of bending action:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5097.2

If you want to use Surface-to-surface Flow where you map from a base plane to a curved surface, you need to pick on particular areas of each surface to align the mapping, there's some information on that here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4795.10
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4442.24

There are also a bunch of links collected with examples for Flow here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4856.2

- Michael