Creating arches with boolean?

[MesaPrs]

I've been having trouble creating any sort of archway shape in Max and was curious if anyone uses any method other than subtractive boolean that works? When I use a boolean to cut an arch out of a plane/box, there's always a stray poly cutting through one side of the opening, or similar, and sweeping an arch doesn't really do the trick...

Thanks for any help

John

[Claudio Branch]

I would recommend staying away from booelan modeling because you are just going to get undesirable results with your geometry most times. "ProBoolean" seems to mitigate some of the shortcomings of a booolean modeling approach. It is one of may selections within the "Compound Objects" dialogue.

 

If you want something generic (that you can add some modifiers onto) try using the Tube (Standard Primitive) object type and turning "slice" on. From there you can change the parameters to suit your needs and collapse the modifier stack into an Editable Poly. The EP sub-object tools are very powerful for doing clean modeling quickly.

 

If you need something specific, then you should trace its dominant profile and convert the spline to Editable Poly and extrude faces to build your form.

 

You may want to Google "arch meshes" or something similiar and see what kind of images pop up. This way you can see how others have tackled this problem and come up with a modeling workflow that suits you.