Carving tool question

Many people say not to carve why is that what if I change my mind
later and want to add a window or a blown out hole which u I believe
have to use the carve tool. Why is the carve tool even there I have
long ass compiles and it might be that but I dont want to have to make
the building brush by brush cause what if i want to change something I
dont clearly understand.

Well, it's just not worth the effort
honestly.
It's easier to use the clip tool just because you have
practically absolute control over where cuts are made.

For
rooms or buildings you CAN make a block and hollow it out, but you
just have to make sure you adjust the corners and such. I find that
faster then making it brush by brush.

But, if you want to make
a window in a pre-existing wall, just clip out the smallest sections
you can for the window.

Basically, Carve = bad because it
doesn't cut in the most efficient ways.

does it affect my compile times? at all cause VVIS is stuck at 6 and it
has been going for sinces 5 o clock here so around 2 hour 42 min.

I use the carve tool only for cutting out rectangular pieces from
rectangular brushes. Anything besides that and it never seems to
work right. He's right though that clipping is much cleaner. It
shouldn't affect vis time unless you have some complex geometry you are
using carve on/for.

Having vis be stuck/slow is probably a result of having too many
portals or having too much visible. Try using more
func_detail for your brushes to simplify vis. Also, if this is
just a development build add a "-fast" or a "-nosort" as the first
parameter to the vis executable and you will not have to bother with
the portal flowing, which is where I am assuming it is stuck at.
But for a full build you really are s**t outta luck you just have to
simplify vis or bite the dust and let it run for a day.

Okay on your first post: Grammar I cant tell what the f*** you are saying

Never carve (what seems to define a new mapper to HL is they use the
carve tool), unless its the case that SaintGreg used, even then I find
its easier to use the clip tool or reforming brushes.

Carving only affects your compile time if you cut something up into a
hole crap load of brushes, even then it only affects your bsp time, not
vis. Perhapse you have a leak, or your map is massive, do you have some
sort of error occuring before it reaches vis? Like ***Leaked***

what about cutting out irregular shapes... like a star pattern, would be hard to do that manually with clip... im not new to HL mapping, but i use clip and carve about the same, there are just some things that clip cant do (or at least i havent found how to do)...

as for his example, an irregular shape in a wall (from an explosion or something), i would use clip to make a rectagle to the size of the blast, then use carve for the complex shape....

and please dont flame, this is just the way i do it, its easy and effective for me... if you have any "constructive criticism" i will be glad to listen, just please try to keep this free from "flaming criticism"

a combination of the clip and vertex tools will create any shape you want. and will be a lot less likely to cause problems.

carving anything other than simple regular squares/rectangles is a big mistake.