how do i make an object into empty space? say i am making a brick and i want to make the holes, how do i go about doing that?

gmax

This is just one of the many ways to do this.


Start with the following
1.      Brick
2.      Circles
Align the circles so that in the top view they are where the holes are supposed to be.



It should look something like this



Now do the following
1.      select the brick in the viewport
2.      select compound objects from the menu
3.      select shapemerge
4.      select pick shape
5.      in the viewport, select each of the circles
6.      you will see the name of the circles show up in the box as you select them




Now right click on the brick and convert to editable poly or what ever you are using and then go to the vertex level and you will see something like this.





You will see that it created a lot of vertexes along the outside of the circle so you might need to collapse a bunch of them together by selecting some of the vertexes and clicking on collapse on the right.



After you get it cleaned up, go to poly level, select the poly that fills the circle and then click extrude it inwards to make it a hole in the brick.



And it should look something like this.



Keep in mind that this is only one way to do this like Stormtropper has mentioned another one in the post above.


It might seem like a long process but it took me about 30 seconds to complete the steps and about 30 minutes to take the screens and post this. hope this makes sense.

Jon