Cut holes in prims

Is there a way to cut holes in prims, for a doorway for example, or do you have to build around the door?

There are a few shapes that are available, and which hollow from the centre of prims. They are very useful but they cannot be altered (made to be off centre).

Make a cube - hollow it in a square, triangle, or circle, for instance.

Is there a way to cut a hole in the side of it though?

Not really sure what you mean in the side of it, which side. K you need to experiment with two things. Hollow and the cut tools. Just seriously rez a square and start manipulating it. There really is no side to speak of. If you hollow it out, then you rotate it to the point where it works in your build, and flatten it down accordingly. See, it can be whatever side you want. But if you hollow prims in a build the positioning may not be what you need. Always cut and hollow before you integrate. And there's twist as well, there's quite a few manipulations you can do. Once again, Ivory Tower of Prims is your best bet for info and models. Amazing place, has pretty much taught us all something.

The hollow and cut parameters aren't really what I had in mind, but I've done some more looking around and cutting holes in walls doesn't seem to be possible. It would be a nice feature though.

There's one side of it you can cut holes into: From top to bottom of a default shape. Then you rotate it if you need it on its side like a window.

Plan the hole first, then customize the dimensions.

Yes, we've been discussing how nice it would be to have prims that create a void for years now. It's fun, though, to solve the building puzzles using our wonderful prims.

Well, complaining about what you don't have doesn't solve the problem. Being creative does. I recently built a large store for my wares, and I used 20x20 mega prims for the walls. I needed to cut a 'hole' in the wall for the door, which had to be arched in a Persian/Taj Mahal type of opening. To solve the problem, I did this:

1. I exported the wall texture to my hard drive.
2. I edited the wall texture in photoshop, and made the area of the desired opening transparent.
3. I re-uploaded the texture.
4. I applied the texture to both sides of the wall.
5. I made that prim phantom.
6. I created two flat wide and tall prims and sunk them into the wall between the door and the end of the prim on both sides to create a collision prim so one cannot walk through the wall.
7. I had previously made the arch to fit into the doorway (like a door jam), and placed that.

The lesson here is that you get more results from a little creative thinking, and less from whining in the forums about features you don't have.


http://www.secondscripter.com/

That's a great idea, thanks!

?uh?

thats the 2 tools i use to make walls with windows and doorway arches >?

Nothing wrong with that, except that they are limiting tools. After all, you can only put a hole along the Z-axis of a prim, and it's centered and symmetrical. If you want a hole in a different place or with different proportions, you're out of luck. If you want a window or door to be in a particular place on the prim, other than the center, and you need it to have specific dimensions, you only have two choices: (1) Draw it as a texture with alpha transparency or (2) frame the opening with multiple prims. The first option is low-prim and can be as detailed and oddly-shaped as you can draw a texture, but it leaves you vulnerable to alpha sorting issues. The second option makes a real hole instead of a virtual hole, and doesn't cause alpha sorting problems, but it eats prims. Flip a coin and decide which one is best for what you're doing.

I swear I saw a gadget that did this on SLX...you place the windows and doors where you want them and the gadget would cut the hole out for you. Was quite expensive too. Wish I could remember the name of it now.

A very simple studio, but an extremely useful one. By simply placing a block outline of where you want your door or window, it will automatically cut a hole in the wall for you! It's one of those things you have to see to believe, check out the You Tube tutorial:

Windows and Door Studio


Its called Virtual Builders Studio or VBS...on SLX...knew I'd seen it somewhere, lol.

that's by a particular scripter/builder who hasn't given very good support for a few months now.

also it's not an actual hole, its replacing one prim with 4. if you know how to cut you can do the same thing with 2 or 3 prims.

I see, thanks Dekka...just wasnt the way they portrayed it then.

1 prim Doorway:

Make a Box 10x10x0.5

Cut at 0.375 to 0.875 ( cuts it in half) (or 0.125 to 0.625)

Set Hollow for 80 - 90%

Rotate into proper position..

Resize Width and adjust Hollow Percentage

Done

you can use a megaprim to make bigger doorways too

Yes, this is a fine way to make a door jamb. To position it in a wall, of course, you still need a prim on either side, and maybe one on top. If the goal is to make a door opening with a minimal number of prims, this method is only good if you want the door opening to be bang in the middle of the wall.

Okay, following along here... Maybe everyone can sympathize that I am having trouble with the door frame issue... plus I am new at this...sort of building by hit and miss.

Been using 3 prims to make a door frame....two large for left and right sides...a smaller prim is connecting the two pieces at the top....there is a 4th prim that serves as a floor for the house. The issue I am having is the connecting panel between the side pieces...I cannot get the 3 pieces to align well...the connecting piece always shows seams regardless of what I do or what texture is used. Yes, I have tried both the skidz prims and the other major prim alignment tool and they don't seem to help.

I wouldn't mind the hollow method with the door in the middle, but I can't seem to trim one of the sides of the hollow off where it is nice and flat/even without trimming off 1/2 the prim. Any suggestions other then what I have been doing? I avoid alpha textures if I can.

Thanks!

Struggling builder

You can use hollow to work some of your hole issues...other than that, there is no 'boolean operation' that will cookie-cutter shapes like in other 3d apps...

If you want a door...use hollow for the trim, and three other prims to create the door shape.

Yes, alignment can be a bear. Even when you get things looking great, SL sometimes takes a funny bump overnight and your prims drift slightly out of alignment again. Frankly, I have had the best luck by using prims with nice, simple dimensions (to make the math easier), calculating where the edges should be, and then making final adjustments to those edge positions by typing the numbers into the XYZ dimension boxes in the Edit >> Object panel. Sometimes, though, you just have to live with imperfections .... just like in RL.



Ah, well the trick here is to do just that ... trim away the whole bottom edge of the prim. The leftover sides will have pointy bottoms on them, but you just jam them into the door sill or the floor and nobody will see them. When you're all done, though, you will have a wall that doesn't necessarily have the dimensions you want. The dimensions of the door, after all, govern the shape of the hole in your wall prim and control the shape of the wall itself. So, you'll still probably need to add a couple of prims to finish off the wall --- which brings you back to the issue of prim alignment again. No escape.

Thanks Rolig! At least now I know I am not completely a loser when it comes to trying to build stuff...guess I will start practicing more.