Booleans:
* Using
Boolean operators for simple additive / subtractive tooling generally is a questionable method. You may as well spend the time and devise a clean and tidy mesh. However, once you get to more complex geometries, there is no way past it.
* Constructing the attached gadget (used in a specific type of scaffolding) without Booleans would be matter of numerous & laborious calculations and point shifting, taking a few days. Using a Boolean you get there in 3 minutes plus a bit of fiddling.
* Our Good Doctor has achieved an extremely clean topology with C3D´s Booleans. Yep, you need to fiddle and fine-tune parameters of the components to synchronise meshes for optimising the Boolean calculated by his algorithms. Once you know where to tweak the mesh there will be excellent results.
* Animating Booleans can produce complex and weird effects. The major problem is that you (well, I) mostly can not visualise these effects. These are shape-shifting phantasmagorias which do not exist in the real observable 3D environment.
* Conceiving a Boolean hierarchy with 7 layers (as MonkeyT mentions about Bryce™) seems to be beyond my intelligence. But then, again, I am not a student of Benoit Mandelbrot and fractal geometry :frown:
* Also, there are no hard and fast rules for 3D modelling. Arch Viz, stage design, engineering, human modelling, scientific concepts, 3D printing (and a few more) are far too different to be comparable.