I am currently working on my Final Degree Project and I am quite stuck with the final design of a mold in Blender. I am completely new to the software and, although I have tried several approaches by watching tutorials and testing UV projection, booleans and Geometry Nodes, I have not been able to get a proper result.
What I need is to create a real perforated mesh pattern on a specific area of the mold, not just a visual texture. The perforations must be real geometry and exportable for 3D printing/manufacturing. Each hole should be around 1.4 mm in diameter, and the area where they have to be placed has a thickness of about 2 mm.
The main issue is that the holes need to follow the surface properly, but they must not touch or cut through the ribs/reinforcements of the mold. I would also like to do it in the lightest way possible, because having many small perforations makes the file very heavy and difficult to work with.
I have attached a reference image showing the kind of perforated finish I am trying to achieve.
Could anyone advise me on the best workflow for this in Blender? I am not sure whether Geometry Nodes, instanced booleans, displacement, remeshing, or another method would be the most suitable approach.
I would really appreciate any help, guidance, or simple example, because I have been trying to solve this for a while and I am stuck at this final stage of the project.
unfortunately, images aren’t uploading right now, the good mister BartV is working on it, and it shouldn’t be too long before things are gucci once more.
If I’m understanding your text description correctly, I would make a little grid, shrinkwrap that to the model surface, then instance spheres across the vertices, make them real geometry, and boolean them.
This will of course, make numerous ngons, but you can solve that quickly with a triangulate modifier.
I would do this as the very last step of course, you don’t want to continue working with the model after applying booleans.
I’m sure there’s some clever geometry nodes way to do it as well, but thats not my area of expertise as a certified old dinosaur.
One alternative also, could be an absolute buttload of ring cuts and subdivisions, and just extruding them in over the area, but then you’d have to subdivide it again to make them round. Assuming you even want them round, of course, with the image missing I can only assume.
If you are use CNC to make the mold instead of 3D printing, creating a mesh model may be a wasted effort. Some CADCAM software will not accept a mesh, or is very limited with producing a toolpath from a mesh.
In that case CAD software must be used to produce a nurbs model.
