Drawing primitives at arbitary angles

[jasonio]

I've got a cad drawing with rectangles positioned at arbitary angles. For quickness, I would like to draw a box directly over these rectangles but I can't for the life of me work out how to change the angle at which I can draw primitives. It always stays parallel to the global xyz/world axis.

 

In AutoCAD I could change the UCS (co-ordinate system) and then draw a rectangle with edges paralell to the co-ords system.

 

What's the best approach for doing this in 3ds max with a box primitive?

 

Many thanks in advance.

[BrianKitts]

turn on the autogrid option when creating your primitive and it will create it perpendicular to any surface that you click on to create the primitive

Edited October 22, 2009 by BrianKitts

[jasonio]

Thanks for the info.

 

I'm wondering if the rectangles I'm using as a guide are just lines and autogrid doesn't work with them is there another way to change the global co-ordinates?

 

EDIT: Found an alternative which is select lines and convert to editable mesh and extrude but it doesn't work in all cases.

Edited October 23, 2009 by jasonio

[SandmanNinja]

Yeah, that's a good work-around, but the auto-grid option was made for stuff like that. I've auto-grided many objects onto some weird angles making science fiction poly models...

[jasonio]

Is there a way to manually reorientate the grid?

[Spacelord]

Use a grid from the dummy objects, it works really well.

 

cheers

[SandmanNinja]

There are user grids. You can rotate them as well. If you know the angle, go to Rotate mode, angle snaps, rotate. But DON'T use AutoGrid if you use User Grids - things get funky.

[Spacelord]

There are user grids. You can rotate them as well. If you know the angle, go to Rotate mode, angle snaps, rotate. But DON'T use AutoGrid if you use User Grids - things get funky.

 

Yep thats what I was talking about.

User Grids are great, the best thing is you can use the user GRID viewports too.