Tool Center Point Defined

Tool Center Point:

interface:

The Tool Origin Point of most K-3D tools is controlled with the standard Origin Tab that appears as part of their interface.

use:

A behavior of a large number of K-3D tools, including DoBeSphere, Extrude, Lathe, Rotate, Scale, Slant, Taper, Translate, Twist, and Wave is altered by their Tool Origin Point … a user-defined point around which their respective transformations are applied. In many cases, the Tool Origin Point represents a point that is unaffected by the transformation. For example, if you are altering the following object:

tooloriginpoint_sample1.gif (4637 bytes)

And you scale it by 200% along the X and Y axes using the object’s geometric center (the default for the Tool Center Point), you get the following results:

tooloriginpoint_sample2.gif (5137 bytes)

Since the Tool Center Point was set to "Geometric Center", the cube was scaled around its’ center. If the Tool Center Point had been set to "Min. X", instead, the cube would have been scaled around its’ minimum X coordinate:

tooloriginpoint_sample3.gif (5107 bytes)

Note that the left edge of the cube (its’ minimum X value) hasn’t moved. With the Tool Center Point set to "Max Y), you’d see the following:

tooloriginpoint_sample4.gif (5100 bytes)

Again, the top edge of the cube (its’ maximum Y value) hasn’t moved, and the rest of the cube has been scaled around it.

tips:

Be sure to experiment with different Tool Origin Point settings with the different tools to get a feel for how it affects their results.

 

 

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