opBoolean UNIONs

robert_carpenter114

 For anyone having difficulties with opBoolean unions, I discovered that adding 
"targetsAndToolsNeedGrouping" : true to the parameters list
caused the operation to be performed successfully. 

opBoolean(context, getUID(id, "boolean", 2), {

                       "tools" : qCreatedBy(getUID(id, "extrude", 2), EntityType.BODY),

                       "targets" : partToADDto,

                    "operationType" : BooleanOperationType.UNION,

                    "targetsAndToolsNeedGrouping" : true

                    

                });

MBartlett21

@robert_carpenter114
It is because, when you don't have "targetsAndToolsNeedGrouping" : true, it only uses the tools, not the targets. It is link the normal Boolean feature

kevin_o_toole_1

To elaborate a bit on what @mbartlett21 said:
The preferred way to do a simple boolean union is to put all the bodies to merge into the "tools" field. You can do this by combining multiple queries with qUnion.

<div>opBoolean(context, id + "boolean1", {
        "tools" : qUnion([
                firstEntities,
                secondEntities
            ]),
        "operationType" : BooleanOperationType.UNION
});<br></div>

"targetsAndToolsNeedGrouping" provides a more complex behavior, which can be useful for when a single union is grouping multiple sets of disjoint bodies. For a simple union of two parts, the above code is sufficient (and will more accurately report when the union did not have any effect).

robert_carpenter114

Oh Okay.  Thanks for pointing this out Kevin.   My one tiny criticism of the Featurescript project is its apparent lack of a 'cookbook' type of guide.   The idea of the cookbook is to compile a whole bunch of little examples of the sort where you say 'now suppose you want to do this, then here is a little example code snippet that does it.'   I think that's the   way most people learn something.

Cache_River_Mill

kevin_o_toole_1 said:

To elaborate a bit on what @mbartlett21 said:
The preferred way to do a simple boolean union is to put all the bodies to merge into the "tools" field. You can do this by combining multiple queries with qUnion.

<div>opBoolean(context, id + "boolean1", {
        "tools" : qUnion([
                firstEntities,
                secondEntities
            ]),
        "operationType" : BooleanOperationType.UNION
});<br></div>

"targetsAndToolsNeedGrouping" provides a more complex behavior, which can be useful for when a single union is grouping multiple sets of disjoint bodies. For a simple union of two parts, the above code is sufficient (and will more accurately report when the union did not have any effect).

Thank you, this helped.