Rotate to align

[Arnold Sher]

Hi everyone,

 

Rather an irrotating small thing that i just do not seem to figure it out. When we receive drawings from clients in autocad a lot of times that will not be squared to x or y axis and would be at an odd an angle. We prefer modelling in max and therefore i wanted to find out if anyone knows a simple way to rotate clients drawings to line up with x or y axis.

 

i just do seem to get it right... And yes we do know how to do it autocad but we wanted to know if there is a way in studio max...

 

thanxs in advance

[Darkling]

Why are you unable to do it in AutoCAD? I often have the same problem, and If I am unable to rotate the drawings in AC, I will just select all, use the selection center pivot, and do a Rotate Transform Type-In with the angle I got from AC.

 

Not sure if I am missing something, but this always works for me.

[Arnold Sher]

i am able to do it in autocad but was wondering how to do it max. I remember seeing it somewhere in one of the tutorials a while back and for the life of me cannot remember how to do it... probably will come to me in about a month or so:)

[Koper]

hey arnold

 

you can always create two boxes, one just plain that is aligned to max's x'y'

and a second box from tracing a shape from the cad lines and extrude. group the cad drawing and profiled box and then 'normal' align the profiled box to the normal box.

[Arnold Sher]

welcome to all South Africans...lol... yeah i know, but there used to be a simple way of doing it and for the life of me i cannot remember...

[Darkling]

i am able to do it in autocad but was wondering how to do it max. I remember seeing it somewhere in one of the tutorials a while back and for the life of me cannot remember how to do it... probably will come to me in about a month or so:)

 

Sorry, I must be missing something, but why wont my earlier suggestion work? Just import the drawing, select all, and do a rotate transform type-in. (Right click on the rotate button). And make sure you use the "Selection Center Pivot".

 

You should be able to get the angle to rotate by from autocad by selecting one of the lines which you would like to be perpendicular and getting its angle from the properties window.

[Koper]

thats if you have acad. but the questions is on how to do it in max without acad

[Darkling]

thats if you have acad. but the questions is on how to do it in max without acad

 

The simplest way to do it in that case is to get the angle using the tape or protractor tools and then doing a rotation as I mentioned earlier.

 

Always a laugh to see how many South Africans hang out here.

[johnvid]

I don't know if it's me that is missing something or Arnold, If you want to rotate an object in Max you can, if you want to rotate its pivot point without rotating the object, you can, If you want to flip it, mirror it, or align object on a path, you can! What am I missing?

 

if it's the world axis, then I usually rotate the drawing in the viewport and move my objects in X&Y aligned to the screen. But long before the drawings come from Autocad, they have to be prepared for use in MAX, eg removing data you dont want or need, so if you can do it in ACAD, then please share that info.

[anton]

There is no easy way to do it in max by default. But fortunately there is a script I'm using all the time which reproduces the align command in Autocad. You can find it here: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/3-point-align

 

Hope this helpls.

Thanks,