Hole maker add-on

This add-on is a tool to make holes in a mesh with an exact diameter and depth and position. For the position you chose a vertex, this is the center of the hole.

In Blender there are multiple ways to manipulate and locate vertices.

To install:

Download the add-on and in the preference menu  select  installation.

Go to the folder where the file is downloaded and pick the file.

When the add-on, Hole Maker is installed is resides in the edit menu on the(only in Edit Mode)

Now select a vertex and press ‘Make Hole(s)’.

The main menu appears.

-Cursor Direction/Normal Direction: 

The hole will be made in the direction of the normal of the vertex, when the box is checked the hole is in the direction of the 3D cursor.

-Main Hole/ Main H. and Countersink:

Only one straight hole when the box is checked two holes, the straight hole and a start hole or countersink. When the box is checked, there appears an extra column to set the properties of the second hole.

-Exact/Fast:

The holes are boolean operations, here you can set the boolean to fast or exact.

Mostly exact works better, but sometimes fast works better.

-Maximum Vertices:

Is built in because when you have chosen by accident too many vertices the computer can choke.

-Rotation

Rotation sets the rotation of the hole, with the axis of the hole as the rotation center.

-Diam. Top / Diam Bottom:

The main hole has only one diameter, the countersink has a bottom and top.

The top diameter is the diameter at the plane of the center vertex.

-Vertices:

The number of vertices of the circle . When set to 4 the hole will be square.

Versions:

-added version 'Holemaker_1b' where you can choose the 'self button' because the exact boolean sometimes does not work well without.

It is a lot slower but more exact.

- Added Holemaker_2.zip (24-10-2021)

In this version the booleans are executed in object mode, this solves issues with self intersection.

It makes no difference in use, it only leads to better results. There are created two collection; 'Main Cutter' and 'Counter Sink'.

These collection can be removed, they will be created again when new holes are made.