I decided to give "MAKING" rather then "USING" a try, so I picked up FSDS V3 and got to work.I have moved on to cutting windows from the fuselage of my aircraft using boolean operations. Problem I am haing is that when I apply smoothing, the wrinkles caused by the numerous polygons that boolean ops generate make my plane a complete mess. Help in resolving this is appreciated.http://home.wi.rr.com/pbartelt/nosmooth.JPGhttp://home.wi.rr.com/pbartelt/smooth.JPG

go into polygon mode on the fueslage, step throught them one by and look for surface normals pointing in wierd diredctions. you can delete these "extra" polys as you go. just have unlimited undo checked in your preferences so you can go back and fix something if you make a mistake and delete a poly you need.Brian

>OMG!!!>>I am starting to understad where the hundeds of hours come>from when people make models.LOL!!!Yep, if only everyone would learn this lesson, we'd have a lot less "whining" to endure... ;)

>OMG!!!>>I am starting to understad where the hundeds of hours come>from when people make models. You mean there's no "magic button" that you press and out comes the model all nicely animated and textured like you want it?:)

:-xxrotflmao :-xxrotflmao "Magic Button" I must admit though, I really need to buy Louis a case of his favorite brew :-beerchug for getting Boolean cuts to work. The time I loose in smoothing out the mesh is way offset by the time savings when chopping windows and doors.Brian

One thing I've found with the Boolean feature is it seems to prefer to be dealing with three-sided polys throughout on (for lack of a better word) the "donor" part. Attached is an example of the Boolean output of a door I cut in the Eclipse--underneath is the original part both shaded and unshaded so you can get an idea of the poly structure before the boolean operation. The results exceeded my expecations--I only found one rougue poly. But considering the original fuse was a work of Dave Eckert's, who is a master of FSDS design, it stands to reason that the part would work so well with the Boolean feature.In the end, the new part did not see many polys added as it was already built the way the Boolean feature seems to prefer.-Johnhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/136721.jpg

>>OMG!!!>>>>I am starting to understad where the hundeds of hours come>>from when people make models.>>LOL!!!>>Yep, if only everyone would learn this lesson, we'd>have a lot less "whining" to endure... ;)Absolutely, the degree of "hand craft" and "alchemy" required to make things go is staggering.