8 techniques of cutting holes in Blender
Why Blender Stack Exchange recommends it
Blender Stack Exchange answerers point people to it when they need to cut holes cleanly and want to avoid messy boolean topology and n-gons.
Recommended by 6 people across 12 different months, 2014 to 2021.
What it is
A short Blender tutorial from Evermotion that demonstrates eight ways to cut holes in flat and curved meshes, made with Blender 2.67b. It walks through modeling-based methods and shows how each affects the resulting topology.
What people said
Recommends hochl · 2014-10 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How to make windows into a wall?”
There is a good tutorial on cutting holes into objects [this video] , which is a generalization of your question and might be of interest to you.
Recommends Carlo · 2015-09 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Best way to create a hole in a mesh?”
Here's a link to a video showing different hole-cutting techiniques [this video] Obiuvsly there is not a "best", each one has its pros and cons, each one is preferrable for one situation and not for others. Could you better describe yours? Maybe with a gif/video/blendfile...
Recommends user1853 · 2015-10 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How do i cut a hole into a mesh?”
I recommend you watch this video. It will give you ideas for your current problem and other issues in the future: [this video]
Recommends lemon · 2016-08 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Issue with smooth shading”
I mean having ideally quads only (faces of 4 vertices) and as regular as possible. Some technics here (or other equivalent) can help [this video]
Recommends lemon · 2017-03 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How to avoid mesh anomalies after Knife Project”
This can help also as "corrective" approach [LINK] But as said by @DuarteFarrajotaRamos, knife or boolean operations are some kind of lazy method (at least in Blender), so better topology is needed here (for instance, look at [this video] )
Recommends 3fingeredfrog · 2017-05 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “How to model a television dial?”
A common way to do that is create a hole in the surface, add a circle into that space then fill in the gaps. 1 : Subdivide a plane and delete some of the inner vertices. 2: Add a circle with a vertice count the same as the number of vertices that now make up the inner edges of the plane. 3: Select both the circle and the inner edges of the plane, then using the W shortcut key open the Specials menu and choose Bridge Edge Loops . 4: Using the Extrude tool model the rest of the Dial. 5: Add bevels and or supporting edge loops, smooth….. etc etc . Note that if you intend to use a Subsurf modifier then aim to use a circle with less vertices than in my example below. [LINK] Check on Youtube for c
Recommends user1853 · 2018-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Rendered model is broken”
The problem is that likely you used booleans to cut the holes instead of modeling and you ended up with large ngons. Having large n-gons with non planar geometry will create creases like the ones you are experiencing. Ngons are problematic and is a good practice trying to avoid them. Watch this video [this video] that shows many ways to do holes and keeping proper quad topology.
Recommends user1853 · 2019-03 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Deformation when making a circular hole in a helmet”
Watch this video: 8 ways of cutting holes [this video] . Read also these related links: Cutting a hole in a cylinder [LINK] and Cutting a rounded hole in a sphere [LINK]
Recommends user1853 · 2019-03 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Boolean problem...Help”
Watch this video: 8 ways of cutting holes [this video] . Read also these related links: Cutting a hole in a cylinder [LINK] and Cutting a rounded hole in a sphere [LINK]
Recommends user1853 · 2019-05 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Boolean to cut a hole in a face does not appear to be working”
You can't see the result of the boolean operation because both meshes are visible. If you disable the visibility of the cutting object you can see the result of the boolean operation. [LINK] But you should really try to avoid using booleans for simple operations like this. Booleans will create very messy topology that will give you headaches down the line. There is a indeed a time and a place for booleans, but if you are starting with blender, start on a more solid footing by learning other ways that will yield proper topology. Watch [this video]