lol . I certainly won’t disagree with the math, Barbarella = hot .
Glad that helps, and it’s a great question (I think). Creating a round hole in / on a curved surface can be done a lot of ways & it can be very challenging to do (as far as I know ). Like, in my above example, that solution creates a lot of long polys, and a lot of 3 sided polys which generally = not good, not ‘clean.’ It can create UV problems, texturing problems, blending problems, etc. Another way could be to use the edges to Connect with and create more nice ‘clean’ 4 sided polys for tessellating that mesh area, then create the round hole, but do so without creating 3 sided polys, or letting any polys get to long. Or use materials with opacity ‘holes’ (transparency) to avoid making a high poly count, or messy mesh. I’m not a very good modeler, so I’m guessing there are a bunch of better solutions . And, nice work!
I see Josh’s image and that is not what I’d do. If you want capsule like shapes, then there is an easier way.
Select the Edges that are vertical from inner faces to outer faces at the Rectangular Holes. It’s painful, but if you select 1 per opening, you can use Ring to select the remaining.
Once selected, use Extrude, set the width at base to say 3mm, set the height to say 1.5mm.
Once that’s done, click Ring again to make sure all vertical edges are still selected, then use Chamfer, say 1 new edge, say .6mm spacing.
Autosmooth the Shade Object. You may have to work with the resulting edges which are not planar with the curves of your model… mabe some more division or turning edges.
The file is not a great solution but it might give you some ideas, or it may be good enough if you can live with the abnormal faces that are not following the curves.
Honestly, the easiest thing to do would be to use some planar elements like a rectangle with a capsule shape in it, then extruded, then arrayed radially, delete edge poly’s, weld together all appropriate edges. But, it’s hard to do with the model where it is in the process.
I had to butcher your file in order to make it fit within the file limit. Sorry.
Josh, I am not a dingbat ;) ... that was freaky watching that animated bat.
Just one tiny little problem with the radial array - it won’t work for this because the polys-with-holes are (a) not the same length (longitudinally - front to back of the lamp) on the top and on the bottom and (b) they aren’t at the same angle - the top ones slope more than the bottom ones. I tried exactly that earlier and rapidly came unstuck because each one would have to be rotated into position (tricky) and the entire poly-with-hole extended slightly to make them fit (also tricky without getting artifacts).
Try detaching that entire ring of polys to a new object, move it to the origin (for ease) and rotating it such that the front is vertical - the back won’t be. How one would go about this other than by making each one individually I’m not at all sure.
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Right… the radial array has to happen before the deformations that create the shape of the shade as it is now. Oh and to mention another means Steve reminded me of recently, you could also use the spacing tool but the same issue with having to do this before the deformations.
And you inspired me to try another approach, -the attached Max file goes in progress from left to right. Please feel free to critique it / stomp on it / point and laugh ( -good or bad, the feedback is always appreciated ).
Josh, that’s not a bad way, but I wonder if you should try not to use the Solidify because it can create overlapping geometry. I don’t know if your model had any, but you can achieve what you achieved if you did an extrude of the planar sheet, then bent it and yada yada.
By the way, here is an example of my description in Max2009.
. I certainly won’t disagree with the math, Barbarella = hot 
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