Creating models using code

[Asweez]

My other CME thread was going in this direction but this has nothing to do with CME so I'm moving it to a new thread. I read jabelars tutorial on creating models without techne or anything and I understood most of it. However, I was confused about addBox and rotation. How does the addBox method work? Do the boxes go upward or downward from the point specified (I.e. If I had a box with point 0,0,0, and dimensions of 1,2,1, would the end of the box be at 1,2,1 or 1,-2,1?)?. And where is 0,0,0 when you set the rotation point? Any information on this would be nice.

 

Thanks!

[jabelar]

The box is positioned relative to the rotation point, and the rotation point is relative to the origin of the overall model.

 

So if you have a rotation point for a box at 2, 3, 5 and have a box that is size 1, 1, 1, then one corner will be at 2, 3, 5 and other corner at 3, 4, 6.

 

Now, if you want the rotation point to end up somewhere other than the corner of the box, that is when you use the offset. So if you wanted the rotation point to be in the middle of the box above, you would set the offset to be -0.5, -0.5, -0.5.

 

So it is best to think in this order (but you don't code in this order, I'm just talking about how to figure out the numbers) :

  1) specify the rotation point

  2) specify the size

  3) specify the offset

  4) specify the rotation around the rotation point

 

Hope that helps.