I’m new to blender, but I’ve gone through a bunch of different tutorials, so I’m fairly familiar with most things. For a learning project I wanted to build virtually something I make in the real world.
I take a 3" cube of wood and drill a 1.25" hole in the center of each face. I drill down approximately 1.55", this leaves me a cube that I can see through. I then take a pinball that’s 1.5" and press it through one of the holes. By drilling through all 6 faces it leaves an area in the center that accommodates the ball.
So I though that I would be able to create a sphere, in edit mode, select the center edges and delete them. From there, create a circle in the center and extrude it out so I have a hollow tube. Then choose the edges of the cube around where I deleted and also the rim of the circle and create a face.
I’d planned once I had all six sides done I’d create a cube around the entire assembly and delete the edges in the center of the cube, rinse and repeat.
Obviously since I’m here, I couldn’t get that to work. I think the premise is correct, but I couldn’t figure out a way to choose the edges of the circle and also the edges of the sphere so I could create the new face. I’m thinking I missed something somewhere.
Any help explaining why I wouldn’t be able to choose two different items or what other ways I might accomplish this would be appreciated.
The modeling is not that difficult and your method while not very direct should work. But the bit above sounds like magic!
Anyway about the modeling I would use a three way mirroring to model this because I’m just lazy. I would only have to model 1/8 of the object and not have to deal with hidden faces.
Maybe this will help
loop select- Alt+rclick
select another thing- shift+rclick
combination of the above- alt+shift+rclick
box select- b
iforgetthenameof select- c
You may be getting mixed up with edit and object mode which are changed by tab.
In edit mode you can see verts/edges/faces and edit them, but only for that object. If you want to edit both at once you can join them into one object with ctrl+j.
I would make your thing by taking the defalt cube, w-subdivide x2, slide verts on each side so theres a hexagon shape, delete the hex’s center vert, loop select the sort of hole, extrude this to about center, z for transparent view, and start using w-merge at center to connect the 4 holes. Alternatively use cylinders to make a X sort of thing like they had on WWII beaches, put it in a cube, give cube a boolean modifier which can use the Xthing to cut the holes.
Thanks guys for the replies. I’m going to try to get this thing done today. DruBan, you mentioned using the mirror function, I’ve used it on two sided things, but do really think it could be used 4 times?
Thanks again and I’ll let you know when I get it done.
A little hint about using three way mirror. The mesh on the right is all you need to mirror in x, y, and z to get the left object smoothed out with subsurf. Note the empty faces where the joins will be.
Here’s what I came up with, but as you can see I had some issues tying everything together. I think I’ve got everything worked out except for one thing. I can’t get Blender to do an additional boolean modifier to a cylinder that I’ve already modified. So what I’m doing is creating a cylinder, removing the upper and lower faces. So now it’s a hollow tube. FYI, I drop the top face to the center point for ease of the next step. I then create another cylinder and rotate it 90 degrees. So now I have a T shape. I select both and give them a Boolean (union) modifier which leaves me with a cylinder with a v shape.
Here’s the problem. I want to do that again. I should end up with a crown shape, but I can’t figure how to get Blender to let me do it again.
OK, I think I’m just about done with this project. I figured out that once I removed all the unneeded edges from the first modifier, it would let me do the second modifier. Once that was complete I was able to just duplicate and rotate. Wrapped a cube around it, subdivided removed the faces in front of the holes, chose both edge loops, and filled. You guys were right the actual modelling is pretty easy, once you figure out what you’re really trying to do. I can do one of these in about 10 minutes now.
This might be a topic for another post, but I’m not real happy with the way the wood grain wraps into the holes. I unwrapped the cube to see how it matches up over the image, but here’s my question.
Can I choose an individual face and move it over the image? I’d like the burl to be in the circular parts to eliminate some of the choppyness. I know I can move the whole unwrapped cube, but if I move an individual face does it deform the cube?
Thanks again for your help and ideas on this project. It’s been fun to learn while building something new, instead of just following along with a tutorial.
