Drill
Plugin radically accelerates works all who design 3D furniture, woodworking or other products with a lot of holes.
Standard command "Subtract" requires to select each item individually and destroys subtracted solid. Because of this work unbearably long. Now you can select all the details and holes one frame, press button Drill and wait quietly until the program will do all the work itself. Program itself find details, find hole-solids (it must be on a special layer “Holes”) and subtract every hole. One hole can penetrate a lot of detail; you do not need to make copies of the subtracted solid. Details are not glued together (as does command Subtract).
If you are uncomfortable sharing the solid in layers, then in this case the program contains the Subtraction With Gap command (GAP). It operates similarly to the conventional subtraction and requests two groups of solids.
In addition, the program can:
make the gap between the parts for easy docking.
subtract the hole-solid from blocks and nested blocks.
subtract from the solids in the assembly blocks. Including piercing blocks with solid-holes located in the model.
make gap even if the parts did not intersect, but only touched.
separates the solid which, after drilling, fell apart into parts.
keep subtrahend solid.
use pre-selected objects.
show the progress bar and display statistics to the console.
you can configure which layer will be used for the hole.
program can query to select hole layer on each Drill command.
Plugin can work with 3D-solids only. It not works with Meshes, Surfaces.
Read about downloading and installing the program here.
To run the plugin, you will have to register account and top up your account balance by making a donation or receiving bonuses.
Then you can activate one of the licenses:
Annual license - 10 EUR.
Unlimited license - 50 EUR. Free updates for 1 year.
The trial period is 20 days.
Drill command (DRI)
Draw the assembly of the parts in the form of solids. Blocks, Surface, Mesh and flat drawings will be ignored. Use any of the layers.
Switch the default layer to "Holes". If you do not have such a layer - create it. Layer settings do not matter - the main thing that corresponded to the layer name. Or use DRI with option “HoleLayer”.
Draw holes in the form of cylinders or any other solids. One hole can penetrate as much as necessary details. This ensures concentricity. Optimize and negotiates location of fasteners at this stage. For standard fasteners useful blocks containing fasteners and holes-body.
Call command Drill (DRI). Command will use preselected object if possible. If no selected, command will require select solids and will show options: Gap, SaveHoles|DeleteHoles and HoleLayer.
Gap – option to configure gap between details. If you set gap more than zero program will increase (inflate, swell) hole-solids before subtraction.
SaveHoles|DeleteHoles – You can choice delete hole-solids at end of work or not delete. Solid in block never deleted.
HoleLayer - enter layer name. Have option Query for select layer for each Drill command.
INBlocks - the option allows to subtract FROM blocks. That is, if there are solids in the blocks, the program will subtract and drill them with all holes from the model and from all blocks. The program will work even if the parts are in some blocks, and the holes are in other blocks. The option does not work for nested blocks - only for blocks inserted directly into the model. The program will not subtract from the solids and blocks of the "Holes" layer so that the holes do not self-destruct. The option does not affect the search for subtracted holes in any way - their program will always search inside blocks and nested blocks.
If layer Holes not exist you will see dialog window with layer list. You must click on layer with hole-solids. Only selected object layer is in list.
After select all solids, wait for the end of the command. If thousand details, the better to prepare tea. Working time grows geometrically with the number of holes. But it is still much faster than doing a separate command _Subtract every hole.
At the end of its work, the program will show how to make a hole.
If was allowed to record the solid history, it will be automatically disabled. I strongly recommend to disable recording solid history from the beginning of modeling (System variable SolidHist = 0).
Follow the messages on the console. There may be error messages.
Subtraction With Gap command (GAP)
Call the command Gap.
Select Gap option if you need to change the gap (clearance) between the parts. By default, the gap is zero, and the command works like a normal subtraction of solid.
The INBlocks option is available in the command. It only affects the first requested group of objects. If you enable it, you can select blocks too. In any case, the blocks and solids of the Hole layer will be ignored. See above for more details.
Select the first group of solids of which will be subtracting. You can select these items in advance of the call command. Objects can be a lot, they do not stick together in the single entity. Blocks can only be selected if the INBlocks option is enabled. Other objects will be discarded.
Select the second group of objects. These objects will be used as the subtracted. There already may select blocks. All subtrahend items are always stored in the drawing.
The program will show the progress bar and starts to subtract all of the intersecting body.
At the end of the program will show how many subtractions made.
If a gap greater than zero is specified, the program will subtract it even if the parts did not initially intersect, but only touched or were close to each other.
Be careful with the choice of subtracted parts: if you select the same part, the program will honestly subtract it from itself and nothing will remain in the drawing at all.