About this project
A teaching scene for the five boolean operations. A blue box and an orange sphere sit side by side on the X axis, both feeding a single operation node, and a selector swaps which boolean is applied to the same two inputs. Change the operation first, then drag the separation slider and watch the same pair of solids produce five different results.
Operation
The operation selector offers Union, Difference, Intersection, Symmetric Difference and Hull. The inputs never change; only the way they are combined does. Difference subtracts the sphere from the box, because the box is the first child of the operation node and the sphere the second.
Placement and size
Separation is the number that makes the point. It sets the distance between the box and sphere centres, from 0 to 20, and so decides how much the two solids actually overlap. Push it far enough apart and Intersection returns nothing while Difference leaves the box untouched; pull it down until the shapes interpenetrate and every option gives you something distinct.
Box Width, Solid Depth and Sphere Radius set the inputs themselves. The box starts 18 wide with a vertical thickness of 10, the sphere at a radius of 7. Growing the sphere relative to the box is the other way to force overlap when separation is large.
Cross-section
The cross-section toggle switches on a cut plane through the origin, applied after the boolean. Turn it on when Union or Hull closes the result up and hides where the two inputs actually meet, or to confirm that Difference really did take a bite out of the interior.