Is there an easy way to "core an apple"? (CSG Boolean?)

[halkun]

Hi guys, I'm a little "old hat" when it comes to working with 3D. I've been playing with Sketchup for about a week now, and I have a problem that I don't know how to solve.

Let's take a box. (I would say a sphere, but strangely Sketchup doesn't have that as a primitive.) Anyway, you have a box, and you make that a component.

Now we make a bigger box, make that a component too, and we put the small box inside.

So now we have a box in a box.

I need to do a CSG Boolean operation on the boxes (A Boolean subtract) so I can put a set of holes straight through both boxes. I've tried making my own "cut away" component, but that only cuts one surface. I get around this by telling the component to "intersect". Then I delete the component and manually cut away at the incisions it left behind. This, sadly doesn't work with you have two different components. Even though I'm intersected though both components with my "cutter" component, Sketchup tells me that there is nothing to intersect.

How do you do this?

Thanks for the help guys.

[Gaieus]

Hi Halkun (and welcome).

The method you are doing is the way it should be done in (native = no plugin) sketchup. One thing you need to know however is that

1. intersection lines will always appear in the context you are in at the moment of performing the action (i.e. in your case, outside of either component)
2. this also means that you can only perform a boolean intersection if the two shapes are within the same context (i.e. in your case they are not two, separate components)
   Well, that was two, not one, but the solution is: after placing both components and the other geometry, explode everything, do the intersection and delete unwanted geometry.

There is also a fine "BoolTools" plugin should you need this operation very frequently and especially hate deleting unwanted stuff. It's $ 10 however - but that's only a snack at McDonalds...

It works with separate groups (and end up with one, "joint" group)