Simviation Forums 
Design Forums >> Aircraft & 3D Design >> A couple of Qs on GMax 
(Message started by: EirePlane on Today at 12:40pm)
    

Some extra tips on using the boolean function to make windows.

If you do a boolean on an object more than a couple of times, you run into problems. In this first picture you see an open cylinder with extruded rectangles in postion to do a boolean function.

In the second picture you see the mess you get in after doing a boolean for each separate window.



To get around this - select one of the operand objects and attach all the other operands to it - giving you one object to use as the operand.



You end up with much better results



If your fuselage object is made from a cylinder that's closed at both ends, the boolean function will treat it as a solid and leave you with "walls" going through the cylinder. You'll probably not want this and you'll have to go in and delete each polygon of the walls. This is known as self-inflected pain.



To make the glass for the windows make a clone of the fuselage BEFORE you make the openings in the fuselage and also make a clone of the object that you're going to use to cut out the windows. You can hide these clone objects while you're busy cutting out the window openings. Once you're done cutting out the window openings you can hide the fuselage and unhide the fuselage clone. Rename the fuselage clone to a different name like "window glass". You can tag it properly later. Under the boolean functions make sure to select the "intersection" operation.



Select the "glass" fuselage and create the boolean object and select the clone of the window operand to make the windows.
Your results should look something like this.



Unhide the original fuselage and you should have something like this.



Now you'll have to decide how you want to model the inside of the fuselage _ or make the windows 90 percent opague. Now you can see why some modellers recommend just to put the windows on the texture map when working on an airliner.

Hope this helps.