I am looking at trying to create a flexible system that allows me to place hole patterns on part I am making. Basically it is a riot shield and I want a hole pattern on it.

I am trying to use instancing to create the hole pattern but it does not do anything. So I have a plane called shield1. I have another plane with subdiv modifier called holes1. I have a small cylinder parented to holes called cyl1. Holes1 has instancing set to vertices. When I try to add boolean modifier to shield1 using the instanced holes1 nothing happens.

So does instancing even work with booleans or modifiers?

example .blend file:
<https://www93.zippyshare.com/v/1eSm1urQ/file.html>