How to get a mesh for a "swiss cheese"?

Hello. I'm newbie. Please, help me. I do have a cylinder and about 1000 spheres. I need to cut spheres from the cylinder (to get "swiss cheese") and do mesh the resulting object. I'm trying to do this as follows:

1. Construct a compound (cmp) from spheres (with python).
2. Create cylinder (cyl)
3. Do boolean cut(cyl,cmp).

But third operation (cut) takes a very long time... So, is my way of solving the problem proper, or there is another way?

Are you trying to cut the cylinder using the spheres compound as tool, and this in just one step, ok? Or sphere after sphere?

In the first case, I think it is only a probleme due to the computation time needed for the operation, so the only advice that I can give to you is to make the operation during the night, to have it ready the next morning....

Alessandro wrote:

Are you trying to cut the cylinder using the spheres compound as tool, and this in just one step, ok? Or sphere after sphere?

In the first case, I think it is only a probleme due to the computation time needed for the operation, so the only advice that I can give to you is to make the operation during the night, to have it ready the next morning....

Thanks for answer!
Cutting a sphere after sphere takes about 3 min for 270-th sphere... and it is growing more... For cutting using spheres compound yet no data about takes time, but estimate it is also very long. I have attached a used scripts, data and log files (22 kb): dl.getdropbox.com/u/714488/scripts.tar.gz

Is there a way to circumvent the operation of cutting out? Maybe one can 2D-meshing of the cylinder surface and spheres compound, and to make a 3D-mesh based on them?

I have run cutting of the cylinder using the 1167 spheres compound yesterday afternoon. The process is still ongoing (more than 12 hours)... I am at a loss ... Someone can suggest a way (or another program) that can perform this operation more quickly?