nemesis wrote:

> That box donut sucks.

Sure. But it's still one of the most complex mesh objects I have ever 
constructed in all the years I've been playing with mesh editors.

As I say, if I wanted an actual torus, I could just click "add torus". 
I'm trying to see if it's possible to model nontrivial shapes using only 
a mesh editor. A torus is about the simplest shape that isn't completely 
trivial. Next I might try a genus-2 surface. (I've never seen one 
offered by any package, ever. And it's not a SOR.)

> Should`ve listened to my advice, added a circle, enter edit mode (tab), 
> grab it to the left (g), go to front view (1), hit spin button in the 
> panels below 4 times, hit w and select "Remove doubles", select all (a) 
> and hit ctrl+n to recalculate the normals.  This is how you do surfaces 
> of revolution and is precisely what the "Add torus" script does.

I haven't come across this in the documentation yet, but what does 
Blender mean by "grab"?

Also, IME pressing "a" seems to mean "UNselect all". Some of the 
documentation indicates it's supposed to invert the selection, but that 
doesn't appear to be the case...

>> Sounds easy, right? Well let me tell you: it isn't.
> 
> Of course it isn't easy doing something the wrong way.

Well, they say you learn by your mistakes... or something...

>> Next, punch a hole in the middle.
> 
> forget it:  this isn't CSG, don't try to treat it like one.

Well, there are two ways to make an object. One is to start with nothing 
and slowly build it into something. The other is to start with something 
and slowly cut it down to the thing you want.

I did try taking a cube and extruding it multiple times. I managed to 
make a closed curve, but I couldn't figure out how to join the ends 
together properly. So I tried the subtractive approach instead.

I guess the other thing I could have tried is drawing points and lines 
one at a time, but I have no idea how to do that yet.

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