Booleans

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The Boolean command allows the user to combine multiple layers in various modes (Union, Intersect, Subtract and Add). To perform a boolean operation, you must have geometry in a foreground and a background layer. The background layer will be used as the template to act across the foreground layer.

Boolean Dialogue Box

Union: Combines the two layers together as a seamless mesh removing any overlapping geometry.

Intersect: Results in a mesh created only in areas where the two layers are overlapping. All sections of the two layers that are not overlapping are removed.

Subtract: Removes the background layer from the foreground layer, cutting away any section of the foreground that overlaps with the background layer. New faces will be created to close the area where the background layer cuts through the foreground.

Add: The geometry from both layers are combined into a single mesh. No geometry is removed, but extra vertices may be created to ensure the meshes are stitched together.

See also Drill and Solid Drill. These commands allow you to perform similarly related boolean operations as well.

Comments (6)

Sven Kalkschmidt March 24, 2011 at 7:16 AM

Please explain what a foreground/background layer is. I had to spend quite some time to figure this out.

http://forums.luxology.com/discussion/topic.aspx?id=25639

Tom81 February 4, 2012 at 9:01 AM

Foreground: selected item/layer
Background: visibile but not selected item/layer

wayne miyashiro May 7, 2011 at 7:33 AM

Please explain "Drive Mesh: Last Selected."

Tom81 February 4, 2012 at 9:03 AM

last selected is last selected!!! ^__^

tool use last selected item before the actual selected instead background item.
If you are 3 item mesh Cube, Cone, Sphere ad you would add Cone and Sphere

Select Sphere, deselect Sphere and select Cone use tool

Iotaprime January 31, 2012 at 9:17 AM

I finally got on good terms with this function, avoiding error messages. Modeling a hose clamp with 30 arcing slots around a cylinder. Contiguous poly loops are essential. Select a couple polys and "L" to select the whole loop. This is your means of evaluation. If your target mesh has solid loops selected underneath the cutter you'll get expected results. After each boolean subtraction, I find adjacent poly loop to be discontinuous. This would cause problems for the next position. Solution is to find the next contiguous poly loop, perform a loop slice to add geometry and move an edge loop back to create solid contiguous loops under the next position. I'm sure this is gobbledygook to many but may help some.

swisskid March 17, 2012 at 9:18 PM

Personally, while I generally love MODO 501, the boolean tools are too hard to use since they often create unstable geometries (yes modo crashes). Cinema4d does Booleans better. I have gotten so many "item not closed" error messages it is an uphill battle. I hope that Luxology puts in some smarter mesh handling in 601 as this is very frustrating - I should not have to spend time cleaning up a mesh ruined by the Boolean.
Or at least MODO should highlight problems in red to help locate all open sections so that they can be found quickly and fixed manually. I know this does not help but I am very frustrated with this feature as it slows down progress to a crawl.

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