Google SketchUp - text intersection
This SketchUp result was my recreation of an object I created in the 1990s with CATIA (a sophisticated 3D modeling program) while working at IBM in a department that taught engineers how to design with such software.
What a contrast. It took about 10 minutes to create this in CATIA. It took me hours in SketchUp. Granted, this was Day 2 of my using SketchUp, so I had a few new techniques to learn, namely, how to recontruct surfaces that were not properly formed in the initial intersection operation.
I also learned how to use their Animation option.