Advice on setting gizmo axis and rotating

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

So I have an object I imported from max and it's not centered at 0,0,0. As such, when I attempt to view the object through the "Front" camera and rotate it along one axis via the "Rotate" fields, my object goes off screen. I'm fairly certain it's because MB has the gizmo axis set to the origin rather than the center of my object. Is there a way to do this? I tried the "Center Pivot" button but mostly just get errors.

Second, I tried rotating my object with the rotate brush and it never moves. I tried clicking on the x and y axises of the gizmo and nothing happens. Everything works peachy when I translate my object around......I can grab onto an arrow of the translation gizmo and it works. What's the deal with rotating?

To give you an idea about what I'm trying to do....I have a bowl like object and I wanted to cut a nice groove along the upper lip. I tried using a curve, but that would necessitate spinning my object without always tilting it or zooming as this messes up the scale of my curve. I know I can resize my curve, but in max it's sooooo easy to rotate the camera around the model in one axis. Is there something I'm just not getting with MB? I'd almost prefer a toggle where if you wanted to free rotate the object you could.....or if you wanted the rotation to be forced to a selected axis that could be done, as well.