Trying to model a squat rack

Question

I have been trying to model a squat rack based off of this photo here.

As you can see, the object contains a lot of holes. The best method I know for creating holes in an object (Boolean) really screw up the mesh which would make shading almost impossible when it comes time to do the shading. I was wondering if anyone had any tips on how to approach this project more effeciently. Currently im working on one of the 4 stands and am stuck trying to wrap my head around how I would go about proceeding to create all these holes while still allowing for shading to be done. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Make a cube and subdivide with 3 cuts.

Delete all top and bottom vertices to make your hollow square for the base shape.

Add some more loops at the edges to support subdivision later. (New loops highlighted)

Now, for each side, delete the center vert and Scale the surrounding 4 corner verts closer to the center with S until you get something close to an octagon.

Now you should be able to Alt + Select one of the edges of that octagon to select the whole thing, and Extrude E and immediately Scale S to create a slightly smaller supporting loop for the octagon shape. Do this for each side also and you should end up with this.

These three modifiers set up like this should allow you to build as much of this as you want, quickly.

And then of course duplicating it and editing the base shape you should be able to achieve the different spacings.

Here's the result.

Answer 2

As @Allen Simpson has mentioned, you might look to modifiers to do the job. Staring with a single-skin bar, with enough subdivision to accommodate the various hole-frequencies, this stack does a reasonable job of turning a vertex group 'Holes' into holes. (Top to Bottom):

1. Bevel. Vertices, Absolute,2 segments, limit: the 'Holes' vertex group
2. Mask. The 'Holes' group, inverted, threshold tweaked to the desired outcome.
3. Smooth. 1 repeat, amount by eye, to a circle.
4. Solidify. Outwards, to the desired thickness.
5. Bevel. Edges, by angle, to crisp up the Solidify rim and hold..
6. Subdivision Surface.. minimum necessary.

(CtrlShiftNumpad +, 'Select Next Active' will help you select sequences of vertices quickly)

The resulting topo is passable, if you can afford it, especially with that Hammerite paint-finish...

Answer 3

Not that it isn't annoyingly slow, but if you make a cutter cylinder :

And then duplicate it to create a filler cylinder with ngons removed and inner circles bridged:

Then if you make sure the filler has its ends co-planar with the boolean base, and the cutter is slightly extended, you can first boolean > difference cutter than boolean > union filler for a "good" topology:

By "good" I mean that the ngons have a buffer of quads co-planar with them, though that's only half true, as I didn't add loop cuts near the original cuboid edges, so the buffer here is only on the side of holes. Also keep in mind for subdivision surface it's ideal to have a buffer of two levels of quads.