When inside the Vertex Modeling room..... Select ALL... Hold CTRL and ALT at the same time..... Click on a vertex of the Object which you wish to REMAIN intact. It willl LIGHT UP YELLOW when you have done this correctly. You will now have Boolean subtract available to you. Your next step is to write the guys at Eovaries a letter and blast them for having overlooked this in the manual, even though it was mentionned to them back when they worked for Metacretons 5 years ago. Is there some reason you cannot use a bump-map to accomplish what you are doing ? to what level is your camera going to be viewing this object. (just a thought) good luck