For my doors I get really paranoid about gaps or brushes showing though, so tend to use atleast 14 sides...

There's probably a more efficient method, but this is the way I do it, when I want to carve out a circular hole in a brush.

Basically I cut a square hole the size of the circle I want to cut, then I make some temporary circular brushes the same size as the whole I want to cut out, and place them in the same location as the whole, back a bit so they're not inside the brush. Then I go about making new brushes, and vertex-manipulate them so their points are on the points of the reference brush(s). I hope that makes sense, I'm at work at the moment, so my mind is all over the place atm It doesn't cause any problems with undo, because you're only doing 4 points at a time.

[edit] Also it means you only have to do a quarter, then copy paste and flip

I tried last night to clip a door out of one brush.....

I'll know better next time

I don't really see the problem with carving... What could possible go wrong? XD

(I've seen 1 although, carving with circles isn't something I would do.
And sometimes I try to carve something, it only carves a piece of it.)

I mostly use carving to make simple hallways, like in the UT editor, I make a big block, and carve the map out of that, I think it's much easier then laying down wall by wall, or removing all the walls you get with 'hollow'.

So what should I do and what shouldn't I do? I don't want errors in my map...

Bulska wrote:
I mostly use carving to make simple hallways, like in the UT editor, I make a big block, and carve the map out of that, I think it's much easier then laying down wall by wall, or removing all the walls you get with 'hollow'.

Instead of giving me stupid pictures, why not explain a bit?

I did, read every single response I have made in this thread.

Basically what you are doing is raping the compiler tools. I could go on and on, but thankfully other people already have:

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... eometry%29

http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... pile_Times

There could be entire books written on the subject, but what it basically comes down to is that you should build your map brush-by-brush rather than using Carve, until you can understand how the engine works and thinks.

Except perhaps for carving rectangular blocks out of other rectangular blocks, surely?

No. Use clip, so that you can control what brushes are created and where. Maybe you want the brush above the doorway to extend to the ceiling. Maybe you want it to stretch the whole wall and you want the brushes on the side of the door to extend up to that brush. With carve, you never know what it will do.

In that link it says that was no problem, carving rectangular blocks out of rectangular blocks, and that's all I do.

Also, I don't use the giant box method. If I want a room, I make 1 big cube, then hollow it out with hollow tool (wall thickness: 64)
Then for another room, the same.
Then for a hallway between the 2 rooms, I make a (example) 348x384x1024 block which doesn't intersect with any of the other brushes. Then I make another block, 256x256x1152, and carve trough the block I made earlier to make a hallway.

So, that's only rectangular blocks.

On a side note, I give all surfaces you cannot see, nodraw texture.

EDIT;
whats clip anyways.

The clip tool lets you draw a line that will cut any brushes that are selected into two. So for a doorway, you select your wall, make two clips where the sides of the doorway should be, then select the middle brush and clip where the top of the doorway should be. Select the brush where the door is an delete it. Done.

OR USE CTRL+C.

ah like..

cutting...
lol

ty, will use that and avoid carving, but carving is usefull in some cases in my eyes.