Hi All!

Occasionally, I have made an object, for example, a box (one room house) that has been opened by placing a negative box just inside the original.  Works fine.  As I begin to add windows and doors, I end up running into one that will not work.  Such as today, everything worked, ubtil I tried to make a hole for the doorway and no matter what I have tried, I cannot get an opening.  I have ensured that the primary object is "positive" and the block for the hole is "negative".  There is nothing in the way and the primary object is grouped completely and "positive".  Any hints from you guys?  It's becoming frustrating...

Thanks in advance!

Any chance that any of the pieces in the group are neutral? That's the only thing I can think of that would stop it.
HTH

All of the items in a group, even if not part of the "hole" must be positive?  For example, I have a window that was placed in a window "hole" that is neutral.  It's a doorway that will not form, which I attempted after the window.  Of course, the window "hole" went fine and I simply slide the window into the hole and made a group of everything, then attempted the door.

EDIT:  I tried that just now, but I still cannot add the doorway.  After making the house - adding rooms- I turned the window I placed in the window opening positive, then grouped it and made the group positive.  I still cannot make a doorway...

Maybe your negative object is intersecting with a neutral group?

• Lets say you have a positive cube called 'positiveCube'.
• And a slightly smaller negative cube called 'negativeCube'.
• Now you position negativeCube, inside positiveCube and group them, making a holow cube.
• Lets call the resulting group 'hollowCubeGroup'.

You could say now say that:

hollowCubeGroup = (positiveCube - negativeCube) = (positive - negative)

By default, bryce now says:

postiveCube = positive
negativeCube = negative
hollowCubeGroup = neutral

• Now you make a negative rectangle, to cut out a window, lets call it 'negativeWindow'.
• position negativeWindow to intersect, with your hollowCubeGroup, where you want it to cut out a window.
• Now group 'hollowCubeGroup' and 'negativeWindow', creating a new group 'hollowCubeWithWindow'.

What happens is, you group a **negative **'negativeWindow' with a neutral 'hollowCubeGroup' creating:

hollowCubeWithWindow = (hollowCubeGroup - negativeWindow) = (neutral - negative)

In this case, it does not matter that 'positiveCube' inside 'hollowCubeGroup' is positive, because 'hollowCubeGroup' shields it from any further outside influences.

The solution is to make 'hollowCubeGroup' positive as well, so that:

*hollowCubeWithWindow *= (*hollowCubeGroup *- negativeWindow) = (*positive *- negative)

Which should then result in 'negativeWindow' cutting a nice window out of our 'hollowCubeGroup'.

@Note: To simplify things you could ofcourse group 'positiveCube' 'negativeCube' and 'negativeWindow' in one group, creating:

hollowCubeWithWindow = (positiveCube - negativeCube - negativeWindow) = (positive - negative - negative)

Ah, YES!  

Now I feel like an idiot...  I just need to be more careful, I guess.  Got it working!

THANK YOU both so very much....

Glad to be able to help! Angie gave me a good hint of where things might go wrong :)

I was going to say ungroup all groups, select all the individual objects and group them all as one group, but I think that's what Rayraz said, LOL!
Hi Ray!

Hi Tjohn!

haha yea thats what my footnote said :-P

As an afterthought to this topic:  Would it be a bad idea to automatically set everything to positive when I'm modeling Something in which I'll be using negative properties in order to avoid this situation?  I only ask because I wouldn't want to bind up too much memory or anything else to make Bryce sluggish.  My 'puter is slow enough...

Thanks again, all!

 I'm not sure if it will impact performance much or not.
But i guess purely for keeping things controllable, it seems only logic to only make objects that perform boolean operations positive or negative, while keeping objects that do not perform boolean operations neutral. But maybe thats just the programmer in me speaking... lol

I have a 'secret boolean tutorial' which might give you a new working strategy which can prevent some common mistakes:

http://calyxa.best.vwh.net/pearl/boolean.html

Thanks, **Rayraz.  It's rather helpful for latent programmer in me.

Calyxa, I read that tute.  Thanks!  Very helpful.  I had somewhat been doing things that way.  Although, I admit my work has been sloppy. - I've not been naming things/groups as I should.  Trying to break that bad habit.

Once again, thanks to you all!  Very helpful and has provided more insight for me...

**

This reminds me!
 One of my favourite textures for Boolean work is 'NOTHING'( Bryce grey with 100% trensparency).
 
  Cheers! Jed.

Glad to hear you got things fixed.

Gotta love booleans!!

Another thing to love about Bryce booleans is that you can animate them. I wish Carrara could.
You can use booleans in Carrara, but they won't move.

It also makes things easier and less confusing if you use different family colors for the different meshes.