Cutting a hole into the flat wall of a group (The rectangles for the holes are components)

[Peter-7]

Tube RH 10.skp (212.5 KB)
I think I may have done these steps in the wrong order:

1. Cut out a rectangle for a window.
2. Made the entire geometry into a group.
3. Made the window hole into a component.
4. Tried to use the array function to make 4 more window holes. Ended getting 4 rectangles instead.

Now I cannot remove the geometry out of the centre of each window. I wish to have 5 windows with pulled out frames around them. What should I do next?

Peter

[RTCool]

Can’t really tell what you did from the description.

It’s not clear if you’re at the right context level, but making a component out of the hole certainly messes that up; It all needs to be raw geometry on raw geometry.

You can set yourself up for visual feedback to confirm what you need. Here’s two example of the same thing, one grouped (left) and one raw geometry (right). Click once on the face you want to make a hole in and they look like this. The selection highlight tells you the left is clearly a group and drawing a shape on it won’t work to make a hole, and the one on the right is a raw face which you want.

After drawing a shape for a hole on each of these it looks like this:

The selection highlight is visual feedback that the one on the left is not at the right context level, and the one on the right is.

[Peter-7]

I made a bunch of Cmd Zs and undid lots of things. Then I was able to make a drawn rectangle into a component. Then I made 4 more copies of each one and was able to subsequently cut a hole out of each one.

Now I want frames around my windows. As you can see in the 2nd attachment, I draw a rectangle around the first hole. I am unable to either colour it or pull it out.

When I double click the tube and draw the rectangle around the hole and try to paint the frame white, the entire body of the tube becomes white.

How can I draw a rectangle that can be painted without painting the surface of the tube?

Peter