Groboto Newbie - Basic How To?

[Enupnion]

I am using the 64-bit Windows version of Groboto and I have a question about how to use Groboto for boolean modeling. I believe that if someone can tell me the steps to create this fairly simple object, that I will be able to better grasp working in this program. Right now it's a bit of hit or miss for me.

I want to create something similar to this:



Here are the issues I am facing in Groboto:

How do I place and accurately rotate my five cylinders in Groboto?

I can manually place each cylinder, moving them by eye, but this is tedious at best. How can I, for example, duplicate the first cylinder in place and then rotate it a specific degree from a center that I set? For example, I could place a center cylinder and then a second cylinder on top. Duplicating the second cylinder, how would I rotate it about the center of the FIRST cylinder? And, in doing so, how could I do it to a specific degree so that all five outer cylinders are equally spaced?

How do I Boolean all five of my outer cylinders?

I can bring in a cylinder, set it to Outside Body and it works on one of the cylinders, but not on the others. Since the center cylinder is larger than the five outer ones and overlaps them, the boolean cylinder I bring in will cut the first outer cylinder, but leaves the larger, center cylinder uncut.

How do I "group" all my "positive" cylinders together so that any boolean I bring in will just cut them all?

I am sorry for my newbie questions, but I really want to learn how to use this program and I seem to be stumbling over the simplest of things. I tried to watch one of the tutorial videos, but the one I watched seemed to have a slightly different interface and the methods used to do this or that did not work the same in the Windows version I am using.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Enupnion]

So, there is no help for this? Can someone at least point me in the right direction?

[rstralberg]

I'm a newbie so I can't give any help. However I'm also waiting to see an answer.

[Enupnion]

How do I Boolean all five of my outer cylinders?

I can bring in a cylinder, set it to Outside Body and it works on one of the cylinders, but not on the others. Since the center cylinder is larger than the five outer ones and overlaps them, the boolean cylinder I bring in will cut the first outer cylinder, but leaves the larger, center cylinder uncut.

How do I "group" all my "positive" cylinders together so that any boolean I bring in will just cut them all?

I want to clarify this a bit. Let's say I have six cylinders positioned in Groboto: 1 larger cylinder at the center and 5 around it and overlapping (as in the image in my first post). I then bring in another cylinder to boolean subtract to make a hole in the outer cylinders (and to nick the larger inner cylinder where it overlaps). Why can't I just bring in the cylinder, set it's properties to Outside Body, place it (successfully boolean-ing the geometry where I place it), copy it, rotate it and have that boolean the second cylinder and so forth? Or, should I say, how would I do this successfully?

[boris]

Enuption,

I'll post a more elaborate reply later, but yes, you can duplicate and rotate objects so that they form an equi-angular set around a reference object. The object you want to rotate and duplicate should be selected and selection locked. You choose the rotation tool and the axis (typically Y) and choose snap, say 15 degrees, and then you hold the Alt key and click and drag (say, to the right) on the reference object - not on the selected object. The object will be duplicated and once the mouse travels far enough it will snap to the next 15-degree position around the reference object. Then you release the mouse and click and drag on the reference object again to create the second copy, etc.

[Blugenwitz]

It have different proportions, and mesh is far from perfect, but it was a 5 minutes.
pros: you can adjust every detail.
cons: there is no constraints/instances/duplicates, so for example - you cannot edit all 5 cylinders hole radius at once (but you can adjust their lenght and scale at once, if you highlite them all.)
5 cylinders means that you need to copy them at 72 degrees each. you can only snap to 10,15 and 45, so you need to eyeball it.

I cannot post you a tutorial, because my bandwitch is limited for next few days, but I post scene to work with.

[Enupnion]

Thanks for trying to help. I want to further clarify what I am trying to do. The five outer cylinders overlap the large, center cylinder. Therefore, when I bore a hole through one of the smaller, outer cylinders, I want that to cut both the small cylinder AND the large cylinder. Here's a few images to help out:

This shows an orthographic view of what I want to build as a test:


The red circle show the diameter of the large, central cylinder:


So one boolean will have to cut through two cylinders: the small outer one and the outer edges of the large, central one.

[boris]

Enupnion,

To cut a hole through all the cylinders in your setup you need to place all your cylinders into a single boolean cluster. Once you arranged your five smaller cylinders around the big central cylinder, select the Bool tool in the Edit panel and lasso all six cylinders. Next press E when mouse is over this combined object to activate it for editing. If you then go to the Boolean Trims section of the library, right-click on cyl-outBody there and choose Add to Current Cluster->Place at World Center, that trim cylinder will drill a hole through everything you have.

[Enupnion]

Hello Boris,

Thanks for your help. The issue I am having now is getting snapping to work at all. It seems that no matter what I do snapping is not working. Are there certain steps I need to take to activate snapping?

[Blugenwitz]

link

central cylinder is bit to big, but you can easily change it's radius (open file, point object, press "E", point center cylinder, press "A", change radius). For Snaping you need only Modeling Tools window (Ctrl+shift+M) and one of the tutorials from here. I think first video from second row should explain to you snaping. It's different than snapping from polymodelers, but it works.