I would like a way in Snapmaker Orca to turn a painted section of a model into a hole or negative volume.
Problem
Paint is great for color, supports, seams, and fuzzy skin, but it cannot change geometry. Negative parts work well for cubes, cylinders, and spheres. Many openings are not primitive shapes. They are already designed on the mesh.
Example: a solid jack-o’-lantern. I can hollow it with a sphere negative part. The eyes, nose, and mouth still have to be cut out by hand with extra negatives, mesh booleans, or an external CAD tool. That is slow and inaccurate when the face is a custom design.
Suggested workflow
- Paint the faces that should become openings with the existing paint tools (brush, fill, sphere, height range, gap fill).
- Choose an action:
- Create a negative part from the painted region so I can still move, scale, and boolean it
- Subtract to a set depth (cavity)
- Subtract through the wall (through-hole)
- Keep existing paint on the remaining surfaces after the operation, similar to “keep painting after cut.”
Where it could live
- Paint toolbar, next to Fill / Erase
- Right-click on a painted object: “Boolean subtract painted region”
- Cut / Mesh boolean panel: “Use current paint as cutting region”
Why this belongs in the slicer
The selection tool already exists. The boolean tool already exists. Connecting them would cover decorative openings, lanterns, vents, grilles, and lettering without leaving Orca.
I am not saying this would replace CAD for precision mechanical holes. It is for openings that are already drawn on the model.
Nice-to-have options
- Through-cut vs limited depth
- Result as a separate editable negative part vs baked into the mesh
- Sensible behavior on thin walls, incomplete paint, and multi-part objects