Holes in meshes

Support Modeling
1

Hi all,
I am using blender to prepare a model of an electronics device for a university project.
I am a bit new to it all, and my question is this:

I need to make a lot of holes in a mesh (plane type mesh).
I tried using the boolean operation to subtract meshes from the mail mesh in other to create the holes. the problem is blender froze up on me. I guess it was too complicated.
my holes are either square or round, and they have to be at specific sizes, so I can’t just remove vertices from the main mesh in order to create them…
Is there a way to do this in blender? I’d hate to go back to solidworks…

Thanks.

2

1st method-Subdivided Mesh Plane.

  1. Make a plane mesh.
  2. Subdivide the mesh about 3 or 4 times
  3. Cut holes in the mesh by selecting the verts you want to make the center of the hole and delete those

2nd method-Alpha Map

  1. Make a plane mesh.
  2. Go into image editing program and make a white image with black circles where you want the holes to be.
  3. Map the image on the mesh and use the image as an alpha map, to cut the holes in the plane during rendering.
3

Thanks, I’ll give it a try and see how it works out.

4

…or you can use this tutorial :eyebrowlift:

http://www.blendernewbies.com/tutorials/video/Cutting_a_Hole_in_your_Mesh.mov