Adventures across the 3rd dimension

Yep, just tried it now I'm on my PC. Hold Ctrl while extruding to snap to increments of the Grid. I also find it's easier to be precise by pressing numpad-5 to toggle the perspective.

Yup I tried it too. It moved in increments of 1 m. "Slightly" more than I wanted. And I couldn't figure out how to change the size of increments. I tried one place and that wasn't it.

Now I want to do a boolean extraction and I've seen a guy explain how and it sounds oh so simple except, you're supposed to be in object view but I can only select the bits I want to use in edit view and in edit view I can't use the boolean thingy (for some reason, I mean it IS an edit isn't it?) and in object view I can only select the whole damn scene or nothing. And in the scene tree I can't see the shapes I've added that I wish to subract so I can't select them that way either. ALL my geometry, in spite of being several shapes is called "cube".

EDIT: Found the modifier stuff anyway. Added one, set it to boolean. It says I can show it in edit mode. Edit mode says modifier is now allowed. Object mode says modifier disabled. Not that I expected it to work....

If you zoom in on the view the grid will automatically subdivide into smaller blocks (maybe 10?)

And you can separate parts of your "object" into different "objects" (Mesh>Separate) so maybe the modifier could work that way. But this sounds like it's getting ever more fiddly.

But if I have one item made from one cube and then add another cube mesh, why id my scene still listed as one cube? and om my what have I done? I don't seem to have a grid at all....

I don't know where your grid has gone but you must be adding new meshes while still in Edit mode.
To add a seperate object you must press TAB first to go back into Object mode.

There doesn't seem to be a difference between "mesh" and "object" to me But I'm guessing you mean edit mode adds to the existing mesh/object and object mode adds separate objects. Keeping tabs on those tabs is going to be a chore....

hnnnghnnnnnagrghhh

*has managed to cut away the piece that was supposed to make the hole*
*has managed to make weird faces and rasterized looks and cutting out half the shape*
*has not managed to cut out what I want*

Objects aren't necessarily meshes, but meshes are always objects. A camera is an object, a light is an object, a mesh is an object, a particle emitter and so on. If you are in object mode you are manipulating these items. In edit mode you are manipulating the geometry components contained in a mesh object.

The name assigned to the object in the scene outliner (or whatever it's called in Blender - the list of stuff), is just automatically created when you add a preset primitive, but it doesn't really mean much. It could call it Brian and it would still contain the same stuff. Once you have added geometry to a mesh object it is no longer a cube or cylinder etc. it's just geometry that is contained in the object.

Well, I now have a gazillion Brians and nobody in their right mind would accept my face count. But whatever. I'm also going to hate myself if I ever try to texture this little hut I'm now building, because I'm not currently bothering about the uv mapping, but at least I'm making *some* progress. I think.

Annoyingly I will have to go to bed without managing a proper boolean operation. They keep messing up all the surrounding faces instead of just making a clean cut. For one item, it managed to somehow produce a new face which I could then "extrude inwards" to make a hollow shape. Not the shape I wanted, but still a hollow.... Next, I wanted to use a box to make holes for windows in my "under construction walls". Nope. And I can't get exact enough coordinates with the knife tool and when I used the tool that adds subdivisions, anything I did to one log (yes, log cabin) happened to ALL the logs in that wall, as they are duplicates. I'm not sure if copy paste makes a difference.

Anyway I need sleep and then I DO need to get my butt out of the house and into the car and to the pharmacy and the (further away) grocery store tomorrow, and I just know I'll want to get back to this as soon as I wake up... But if I don't get in my car soon, that new battery will be as dead as the old one...