A bunch of bool
 

Hey, here's one for y'all.

I did a a coupld bool ops on a box, then beveled it a bit. Now I want the middle of the box, and that only to have a grating. Now normally this would just be a matter of subdividing and beveling... no problem. Did that. Already have a grate. But this one is different because of the bools.

I made another box, did some bevels, inverse-selected the polys and deleted them so I would have a bunch of little boxes. Then I beveled them out. The idea was that I would select the top and bottom surfaces and run a bool subtract so I would have the hollow spaces for the grating. But with any bool or stencil I get the error message you see on the screen.

You see, I dont want the whole apparatus booled either. Only the middle part so it looks like a grating inside a frame.

Not sure what to do now. :confused:

If I understand you correctly, you want to build a grate with a frame (like you would find on a ship, perhaps?). The easier way to do this is to make one vertical board and one horizontal board. Make several clones of each to end up with a square grate (picture C). If for some reason you don't want the intersected geometry, make a length of each side (A) and then clone on the horizontal and then vertical to up up with a grate (B). Merge points.

Then you can make your frame and booleen it out of the grid. Clean up any extra polys and you should have a nice fit (D)

:D Ship? What ship? :D

What would a ship be doing with a grate anyway, except to let light and air into the hold and give sailors a place to stand at the top of the halyards?

I knew. I just KNEW you'd reply.

Anyway, thanks a bunch. ;)

There is another way that is nice and simple to work with although not as clean as Cory's method.

• Make a box with enough segments in the X and Z axes as you require holes in your grid.
• Select all the polygons on the top and bottom faces
• Bevel these with the inset you require but no shift.
• Bevel again but with no shift or inset
• Stretch the polygons all the way in towards each other in the Y axis
• Delete the selected polygons
• Merge points.

Takes about 30 seconds to produce...

Yeah that is how I did my other ones. I don't know what I was smoking, not thinking to use what I had done. I guess I was fixated on the idea that my two surfaces on the other layer HAD to be the modified ones.

Thanks.