November 2008Monthly Archives

Tip: Previewing Transformations

transformThe Translate, Rotate, and Scale tools have no Console prompts or ‘creation phase’ so the Tool panel is immediately active. Like all basic transform tools, we can either enter exact values in the Tool Panel or simply click-and-drag in the workspace to interactively perform the action.

The input boxes for the Translate, Rotate, and Scale tools will accept numeric input at any time until the action is closed.

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This means that you can ‘preview’ the effects of the value you entered and still enter another value to replace the previous one. These values are not cumulative, so entering a value of -3 and then a value of -1 will not equal -4.

solidthinking
November 25, 2008
Modeling Tips
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Tip: Resizing an object with BoundingBox Fitting

The Bounding box fitting scales a given object to fit it into a user-defined box. Scaling transformation can be non uniform so that you can define exact dimensions for each direction (X, Y, Z) of the box. Here is how you use it:

1. Select an object. 

2. Click the Bounding Box Fitting icon (If the object has a Construction Tree, the program displays an alert message informing the user that a copy of the object will be created).

3. Pick and drag a HotSpot to change the dimension of your bounding box or insert the new value in the Width field in the Modeling Tool panel. 

You can uncheck the Constrain Proportions in the Modeling Tool Panel in order to set different values in Width, Depth and Height. You can also set a custom scaling center. 

Note: Keep in mind that you cannot use the Bounding box fitting with primitives or with objects that are involved in a construction history without collapsing them. If an object is not collapsed you can edit its parameter inside the modeling tool panel as usual.

solidthinking
November 7, 2008
Modeling Tips
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