Saturday, August 07, 2004

Booleans Nightmare

DON'T waste your time making polygons and extruding them...
Boolean add-subtract-intersect.
I built an entire 3D model in AutoDesk ADT 3.3 using this technique and though it looks pretty nice... and is accurate.... all the parts are separate. Thousands of separate little boxes!

My boss asked me to change a few things - simple things like move a few windows - and it took me days.
Here's the rub.
If I had used ADT walls and windows... I could have made the changes in a second (fractions of a second with a fresh cup of coffee). But because I used extruded solids, I had to modify every single rectangle/box that connected to the windows (brick, precast, soldier course, recessed panels, sills, headers, etc.)
Don't do it.
Build your models with true ADT elements and then add MASS MODELING only as appropriate.
Appropriate in this case would be a fancy trellis or a custom light fixture.

Follow this link to Chris Yancher's blog (Between the Walls).
It's a great video on the ease of use of ADT 2004/5 for mass modeling.

1 comment:

Beau Turner said...

Depending on how complex your changes are you can also just modify the geometry in VIZ (even Solids from AutoCAD). Though in your case I think the changes were quite extensive.