thanks man, yeah that is also what i have done. If u look closely, u can see 6 pink tubes over the pistons, but the engine block is a box. The thing i have done here is, i have made the block from 4 boxes forming the block, and then i used 5 planes on top, and mesh edited it to fit the cylinders, but the engine block is hollow inside, how on earth do i make it the right way? is it possible to cut some holes or something?

I was going to recommend that myself; but I could'nt see the end resulting mesh being all that pretty.

Edit: Best way is to Make a solid box and place your cylinders inside it with a little peeking out, then select by vertice and "pull" them up to the edges of the tubes; after that, hide the tubes and cut out the holes. Fine tune the mesh by making sure all vertices lay on the same horizontal plane in similar positions - edit with z-axis on bottom bar when a vertice is selected and use "untouched" vertices to find your horizontal planes verticle height(or z-axis). You can also edit the mesh initially by using top view and "mousing over" the desired new position, then editing the x and y constraints respectively to move each vertice. Use a high poly horizontal plane on your block for maximum density of vertices around the piston ports to maintain a nice smooth cut.

 

Cheers

You can use a Boolean subtraction of a cylinder or a ShapeMerge with a circle. But these operations create a messy topology which almost always leads to shading problems.

Instead, I would use a few shapes (with the proper amount of segments/vertices) to create a base surface (CrossSection modifier + Surface modifier + convert to Editable Mesh), then duplicate/attach/weld, then shift-move down some edges (this only works in Editable Mesh mode, NOT in Editable Poly). Much cleaner result.

PS: This thread should have been posted in the using gmax forum. Here, it's the gallery.

What program are you using for that? Gmax doesn't have a cross-section modifier so far as I can tell, and its only surface modifier is material; Also, your final mesh looks clean, but it isn't the result of the first two.

Quote: Also, your final mesh looks clean, but it isn't the result of the first two.

Well, I hoped that was obvious! The second mesh is made out of splines using the surface modifiers (CrossSection + Surface).

Here's a quicky:
Draw the shapes you need and attach them together. The order in which you attach them will determine how the CrossSection modifier adds the joining segments. So in the case of three or more shapes, select the inner one for example and work your way towards the outer shape, attaching each one in turn as you go.
Edit the splines so you have matching numbers of vertices (this only to get a clean result). The Divide tool in the Geometry rollout when at the Segment sub-object level can be very useful to add evenly spaced vertices.
DON'T FORGET to match the positions of the first vertex of each spline (Vertex sub-object level, Geometry rollout, MakeFirst button) or else you'll get a twisted topology.
Then apply a CrossSection modifier, followed by a Surface modifier. You might need to flip the normals in order to see the surface (make sure your viewport is not in wireframe mode). Also if you only need the edges defined by the splines, turn the Steps value to zero.
Finally right-click on the object and convert it to Editable Mesh or Poly (if you think you'll need to access the spline level again, add an Edit Mesh modifier in the stack instead of converting).

Practice, make tons of tutorials, practice more and enjoy...   :)

There's something that buggers me in your pic. Why is your mesh entirely displayed as triangles? Did you make the hidden edges visible on purpose?
If not, you might want to fix that!

Are we talking about the same thing?
My point is not about the Edged Faces option of the viewport display. When you create a box, with Edged Faces checked, what do you see? Are the sides made of rectangles (case #1) or of triangles (case #2)?