OK if I understand you correctly, the pivot of the cylinder in not alinged correctly. All the script is doing is aligning the object pivot Z axis to the edge. So if your objects pivot is mis-aligned then you need to fix it first. This is how I do it (and my reason for writing this script in the first place!).

1 – Select an edge that you want to be the Z-axis in the sub-object of the cylinder (copy it and collapse it if neccessary)
2 – Run the script and right click to make a dummy.
3 – Open “Affect Pivot Only” on the Heirarchy command panel.
4 – Use the align tool (Alt+A) and align the orientation of the pivots axis to match the dummy.

Your cylinders pivot will now match what you want, or you can continue to snap rotate it to suit. Now you will be able to align the cylinder to whatever edge you like.

J.

I have rotated the cylinder 45 degrees about X and Z using typed in rotations, used your tool and tried to rotate the cylinder back ( rot.X -45 degrees and rot.Z – 45 degrees. The effect: cylinder did not go back to 0/0/0 rotations, its center is not on the box edge and some, unknown rotations are still present.

Thanks,
M

I feel that the problem can be better described as: how to force the cylinder axis of rotation that is currently located somewhere in 3D space to follow one of the WCS axis.

Matt

First of all thanks for trying the script, and thanks for posting some feedback. I will investigate a way around the older permissions issue to see if there is a way to stop this happening.

Now, onto your question. There are two modes of operation for the “Align to edge” tool, here is how:

Select a sub-object edge, execute the script, then either pick an object to align to the edge OR right click to finish the tool and create a dummy on the edge.

Of course, once you have the dummy you could use the 3DsMax align tool to align whatever you like to it. I often use a dummy as a pick object for the user co-ordinate sytem when things are not aligned to the world.

Did you know that 3DsMax already has a normal align tool? This will allow you to align one objects face to anothers. Look on the align rollout (Hold the mouse button down on the align tool icon).

Josh.

Next, I have tried to align the polygonal cylinder and the edge of the polygonal box. Dummy was created and was aligned to the box edge but the cylinder stayed where it was.

Is this the end result? What can be done next to get the cylinder aligned.

I was looking for the script allowing to align two objects – edge to edge, face to face etc.to eliminate rotations present in one of these objects.

Alternatively, I was looking for the script allowing to align objects with the WCS axes.

I will be grateful for comments,
Thank you,
Matt

Thank you for your quick response, I finally fixed this error, what I did was to right click on the 3ds Max folder, go to ‘Properties’ and then in the ‘security’ tab created a new Group (or User name) called ‘Everyone’ !!! of course selecting all the permissions for this new group… this time had to restart Max and run the script then… voilà!

thank you again!

The script works with both 32 and 64 bit versions of max, and should also work with any 20xx version (maybe even max9).

I have seen this error on user profiles that do not have the rights to change the install directory of max, maybe your windows UAC is stopping installation or you don’t have enough user rights?

J.

– Runtime error: Copy error on file: C: \Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2010\UIIcons\JNAlign_3points_16abmp

Thank you

Sorry it has taken me so long to approve your post I have been a little pre-occupied. Thanks for your comment. I tried your script and it does snap, but it doesn’t provide the real-time feedback that mine does on the third click, which I think is useful. I seem to remember when I was developing the script that my version snapped properly when not contained as a macro. I will hopefully update these scripts with some new align tools soon, and I will try to adapt the three point script to see if we can have the best of both worlds

J.