Boolean Modification Covered Up

Support Modeling
#1

In this file:

Forum Boolean Inset Fail.blend (889.3 KB)

The object “HeadBoard” has three Boolean modifier objects. These re “Inset”, “Inset vertical left”, and “Inset vertical right”. which are used to carve out an inset in the HeadBoard. Care was taken to make hese three modifier objects protruded a little bit from the HeadBoard object. Nevertheless, the inset created by the Boolean modifiers appears only when X Ray is on. When it is off the inset disappears indicating an undesired surface covers it up. What causes this? What is the best way to solve it?

#2

It’s all to do with your cutters, they are intersecting in places. The easier way is make the cutter from the original form and edit it to make a single unified mesh to boolean with.
Here’s what I mean
Forum Boolean Inset Fail_02.blend (717.8 KB)

1 Like
#3

I thought at first the inset was being hidden because Boolean Modifier objects used to create the inset in the HeadBoard object were nearly flush with the HeadBoard object, and where the same color as the HeadBoard object. Making the three Boolean Modifier objects invisible shows the inset is created as expected. Apologies for not thinking to do that before posting this.

#4

Not a problem, booleans are something that at times takes a bit of sideways thinking. I’ve found a couple of instances myself lately where even a duplicate of a working boolean produces a glitch if done in edit mode, but adding a second identical boolean in object mode doesn’t. With that, I took the overall shape as a poly, inset it to get the ‘hole’ i needed to cut and deleted that inset face. I then used vertex slide to deal with any possible overlap issues. Then duplicated the faces, hid them, inset the original faces with Ctrl so I got the taper, unhid the original faces and merged points so I had a “solid” for the boolean. Sounds a lot of effort, but really done in less time than it took to type this. :wink: