Boolean Modeling Help Needed.

[BrandonL]

Hello everyone,

I'm in the process of doing some product visualization, and I seem to be stuck on one particular area. The area in which I'm stuck is booleans. I'll explain what I'm trying to accomplish, and then let you know what I've tried so far. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

What I'm trying to accomplish:
I'm trying to punch round holes within a plane/cube that will be used for a speaker grill. Nothing too fancy. The radius of each circle that I'd like to cut is .095" - so they're pretty small holes. But there are a lot of them. 8 X 74 round holes to be exact. Let me know if you'd like more of a description on this.

What I've tried already:
So this is what I've tried so far. And where I'm currently stuck.
I've created a bunch of cylinders, and then used a boolean to punch the holes within my object. The problem is that it almost completely locks up Cinema 4D, and will only let me continue to use the program if I let it set for a bit. But then it instantly freezes back up. This is obviously due to the crazy amounts of math that is going on by creating those booleans. I feel as though there has to be a more efficient way to do this? :confused:

Thank you in advance for your help! :bow

-Brandon Leichty

[ouidart]

hi

i think you shouldn't use the boolean operation because it doesn't generate clean
geometry and it will slow down your computer .

for me i use another method with simple polygon modeling you can generate good circles with hypernurbs of course .


i explained this method for you in this file :

4416

[gregmill@sbcglobal.net]

brandon i just saw your post. if i understand what you want to do, i think that you should use you materials instead of modeling a speaker cover. let's see if i can describe this correctly.
1st create a plane the size you need.
2nd make a new material, in the alpha channel click on texture triangle go down to surfaces then to tiles. once tiles shows in the header bar click it, in the shader you will want to lick on pattern bar and change it to circles. change you grout color to black, change tile 1 and 2 to white and tile 3 to black. what this does is is make the circle transparent and the other part black. now to get the proper size of circles just adjust the global scale below until you get the desired size. if you apply the material to your plane and use the interactive render view you can view any changes as you make them. in the main alpha panel be sure soft is not checked. this should give you what you are looking for and not eat memory. i hope this helps.
greg

[gregmill@sbcglobal.net]

this is to be added to my previous post once it uploads. quick thing, i forgot if you want your speaker mesh to have some dimension. just right click on the word texture in the alpha channel a sub menu should appear go to copy. then open the bump channel, right click on the word texture go to paste and the setting from the alpha will paste into the bump for a perfect match.

[danlefeb]

Hi BrandonL! I'd suggest you check out lesson #5 in this training course: http://www.digitaltutors.com/09/training.php?cid=5&pid=340

That covers multiple techniques for cutting out circles.