Pattern On Surface, Repeating certain pattern on a given Surface.

Hi, There!

I'm stuck with modeling a Sphere with frequently repeated patterned holes all over it.

Can someone please give me an advice, what would be the easiest way (automatically?) to model this, so the holes can be equally spread on the whole surface?

One of the problem is, that the Sphere is big and the patterns (holes) are small and doing this manually (one after another), would be a real waste of time.

I already tried with the following way: I made a pattern from PolyCube, and Duplicated it (function Duplicate Special, with rotating original pattern) so the patterns formed a shape of a Sphere. This caused a pattern overlaying/covering, which wasn't precisely. Then I combined this polygons. After this I made a Poly Sphere and wanted to make holes (with before mentioned combined patterns) with function booleans-difference.

The final outcome of duplicating was approx. 20.000 patterns (PolyCubes). Of course, this was a total blast for my poor system. And the other problem was, that after booleans-difference function everything disappeared.

After all the effort and time spent, I'm sure, there is a much clearer and simplier way of modeling this Sphere with holes all around.


Thanks for your advices!
Lea