Pwr Revolve ...

[ozboz]

How do you define the axis of rotation? It's apparently not the Pwr Sketch pivot point? :confused:

I'm doing the camera tuturial and it does the lathe/revolve about the about the wrong axis of the sketch. Swap side doesn't seem to work, it changes the axis of rotation vs. choosing the opposite side of the sketch. It won't swap back so I end up undoing it (cntrl-Z). It's not view dependent (front or left)

Seems like there should be an easy way to define the center of rotation. I know I'm missing something.

[ozboz]

Well ...you can pull the axis/center after the fact but that's counterintuitive.

Seems like it should have a select axis if the pivot isn't used and/or an X,Y, or Z axis toggle, selectable with a the standard right hand rule for rotation.

[nPower_Michael]

The Revolve tool is a little tricky in that it defines its axis of rotation implicitly. It does this by looking at the bounding box of the sketch it is trying to revolve.

Basically, the axis of rotation will go through one of the bounding box faces. Hitting "Swap Sides" will move the axis of rotation to the opposite bounding box face. Hitting "Swap X Y" changes the direction of the axis by 90 degrees by attaching it to the adjacent bounding box face.

This means that one cheesy way you can set the axis of rotation before you do the revolve is to go to the sketch used in the revolve, click "Add New Curves" under Sketch Edit Parameters, and add a "Single Point Curve" point where you want the axis of rotation to be. This only works before you do the revolve, and only if the point you add is outside of the original bounding box, and thus forces the box to grow out to where you added the point.

In any case, the best way to have fine control over the axis of revolution is to wait until after you've created the revolve. Select the revolve object, go to Modify->Operator Parameters and click the "Axis Handle" sub object. This will make a Pwr_Sketch sub object appear in the sub object menu. Expand the Pwr_Sketch, click sub object vertices, and use the move tool to move the end points of the axis of rotation. The revolve should update automatically.

Please let me know if this helps. In the mean time, happy surfacing!

[nPower_Dave]

Well ...you can pull the axis/center after the fact but that's counterintuitive.

Seems like it should have a select axis if the pivot isn't used and/or an X,Y, or Z axis toggle, selectable with a the standard right hand rule for rotation.

Yes, we should make that tool a little easier to use in the future.

[PiXeL_MoNKeY]

Or some nice script access to Power Objects so one could get and set sketch vertex parameters, like position. :D Then it would be a simple maxscript tool to pick a sketch line as your new axis.

-Eric