How to rotate in 3dsmax accurately ie not my whole degrees

[Nats]

I am trying to rotate something. I have inserted it into a drawing from Autocad in which I orientated it to suit its exact rotation in a cad plan. Now in 3dsmax I need to rotate it upright whilst keeping its peculiar angle in x and y, but the rotate gizmo is defaulting to the usual straight xyz directions. Is there any way I can reorientate the gizmo to the peculiar axis I ned to use for the rotation?

 

To scale or rotate anything accurately in Autocad I use the 'ref' command to align something to an already drawn line very accurately. I cant seem to find anything in 3dsmax to enable this kind of accuracy when using rotate and scale. In fact it seems the only way to do it is get it as close as possible by eye. Is this right? Is there any means of rotating/scaling accurately in 3dsmax - ie at perculiar angles other than by whole degrees?

 

Another example: if I have a line in plan at say 22.34 degrees how would I rotate something to match that line accurately if I dont know the exact angle it was drawn at? Anyway to do it? Or is by eye the only way? Am I missing something huge here about using 3dsmax accurately?

[dreamer86]

right click on rotate button and a values table appear

[Nats]

Thanks for the reply. Yes I know about that how to key in an exact rotation angle but I dont know what roatation angle I need. I have drawn a line at the exact rotation angle I want to align it to but I cant find out what angle the line is drawn at so I cant rotate my object accurately to match it. How do I match the rotation angle perfectly? And how do I find out what angle the line is drawn at? Stupidly enough an angle readout does appear when you start drawing the line but as soon as you snap onto something it disappears which is exactly the point at which I need the angle readout - its really really frustrating that this seems impossible to do.

 

To explain what I am trying to do I have a set of site steps that are not aligned east west but slightly off a normal angle (as you would expect with a site plan) and I have imported the profile of the steps from autocad and extruded the spline to get them as a 3d object. But now I need to align the steps object to the line of the steps in the cad plan and I cant do it accurately at all.

 

I suppose I could go into Autocad and measure the exact angle of rotation of the site steps there and then come back into 3dsmax and rotate the 3d object that amount but that seems ludicrous that there is no way to do it in 3dsmax directly. How does anyone manage to do things accurately in 3dsmax? Its the one massive failing of the program it seems to me? Unless I am, as I said, just missing something crucial as I am quite new to the program

 

I suppose coming from an Autocad background I am so used to being able to draw things in micrometres of precision that I cant get used to using Max and being lucky to get things within a few mm. But if I get the steps even slightly off in terms of their rotation there will be a small gap between them and the grass at the end furthest from the rotation gizmo (where the rotation inaccuracy will be the most noticable) which will look pretty horrible once rendered right?)

Edited June 15, 2010 by Nats

[dreamer86]

uh im sorry, i've made a misunderstanding

 

i don't know if there is a rotate tool that allow to rotate an object to make it aligned with axis, but maybe you can use another object (eg. a cube) and use the align tool

[Nats]

Well I manged to do it by measuring the angle in Autocad and then rotating it that exact angle in 3dsmax. But I cant beleive there isnt a way to do this in Max directly. All these flaming new versions they keep bringing out and still they havent addressed something as fundamental as this - seems unbelievable. Using a transparent 'ref' command to align things in autocad whilst roating and scaling is absolutely fundamental for any kind of accuracy. This particularly makes scale almost completely useless to resize anything sensibly. Maybe I am just trying to be too fiddly but being an architect I cant help expecting some kind of accuracy.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Maybe this script will help.... 3 point rotate.

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/sergos-script-pack

 

Playing with different settings in the 'Reference Coordinate System' may help also.

[BrianKitts]

create a new object in your scene (or use an existing one) that has the correct axis direction you want to rotate with. Then change your reference coordinate options so that it uses the axis of your helper object instead of it's own.

 

In the drop down select the "pick" option.....click on your helper object then rotate your target object.

Edited June 15, 2010 by BrianKitts