I am somewhat new to 3D modeling. I'm using Carrara 2 with the latest patch. This object was made with primatives and boolean subtractions. However as you can see, there are numerous dents and distortions in the surface around the holes. Changing the silhouette quality in the boolean dialog seems to make no difference.

Can someone tell me why this is happening?

Booleans suck, thats why its happening:) Though not many programs have perfectly working booleans:) so don't feel too bad. My suggestions on things to check would be the size of the subtraction object..make sure its a bit larger then the actually size of the whole/area you want...too close to the edge(internal and external) of the object you are subtracting from and it could cause some deformations. Also did you subtract a cylinder from a cylinder to create the large hole? The more boolean operations you perform the greater the risk of problems. Brian

RDS had near perfect boolean, I can't remeber it ever messing up, I could boolean an object as many times as I wanted. Why doesn't C use the RDS boolean?

I have found that objects with more vertaces boolean better than simpler ones, try subdeviding you cylender then do the boolean

The best (very affordable) modeler I have ever found for booleans is Turbocad v.7x or later. It is just flawlwess and it builds solid models as well. Very complicated shapes can be booleaned then imported with excellent results into Carrara using .3ds. Turbocad is not too dificult to learn and once learned, you might not ever go back to Carrara for anything but the excellent C2 renderings and some vertex modeling... (renderings stillsuck in Turbocad). just thought someone might like to know.

Good evening . . . 8^) I probably shouldn't be posting on this forum right now, my Carrara 2 hasn't arrived yet, ( should be here in the next couple of days ), but I own & use Amapi 6.1 so I thought that since Carrara 2 comes with Amapi 5, I could try to offer some help??? Anyway, I have had the best results with "Booleans" in Amapi 6.1, than other software's that I use. I don't know if you have tried using the Amapi software or not, but maybe you could give it a try for Booleans, then import the object into Carrara 2. It might make a difference??? Just thought I'd offer some kind of help, but if I shouldn't post without making a Carrara post, I will understand, & you guys have a good one . . . Mark. ;^)

The comment above about higher vertex count is spot-on in my experience. RDS's boolean operations are good, but they still do have problems, and I've found that if I increase the amount of vertices around the area I'll be performing the boolean, it'll be much cleaner in the final result. Hope this is helpful....

Thanks for your responses, everyone!