topic Re: How to code Align Selection (max's and min's) in 3ds Max Programming Forum

How to code Align Selection (max's and min's)

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 10:05:34 GMT

I have multiple cylinders 'surface constrained' to a sphere.

I then have multiple planes I want to align to their relevant cylinders, nominating Minimums and Maximums independently for the XYZ axis - as I would when using Align Selection dialog.

How do I achieve this with MaxScript?

I've tried PlaneObject.transform = CylinderObject.transform

But this performs a rotation also, and doesn't give me the ability to set Maximums or Minimums

thanks

Re: How to code Align Selection (max's and min's)

Swordslayer — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 12:55:19 GMT

Just guessing the exact outcome so I might be a little bit off in my assumptions, I guess you might wanna use object's bounding box, right? Each node (and selection of nodes, for that matter) exposes .min, .max and .center property, so some variant of planeObj.pos = cylObj.min might do the trick.

Re: How to code Align Selection (max's and min's)

Anonymous — Sun, 04 Jun 2017 11:01:51 GMT

hi @Swordslayer thanks for the hint but I'm having difficulty getting it to work.

I can dictate the properties of the cylinder ok i.e. cylinder.max .min etc

But I'm getting a runtime error when i do plane.max to match them up i.e. plane.max = cylinder.max

Also I'm having difficulty getting the rotations to line up: plane to cylinder - i think because the cylinder is surface contained to the Sphere

Re: How to code Align Selection (max's and min's)

drew_avis — Tue, 06 Jun 2017 13:55:14 GMT

The min and max properties of a node are read-only, but you could try setting the center and see if that does what you're looking for:

$Plane001.center = $Cylinder001.max

Re: How to code Align Selection (max's and min's)

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 08:41:01 GMT

thanks @drew_avis but as the Cylinder is surface constrained to the Sphere - using its XYZ's to set to the Plane doesn't work, since the Cylinder is no longer at that location in the view - it's over on the Sphere.

So I've figured out another approach: get the controller settings of the Cylinder and apply them to the Plane. I did some digging through the forum and found this post which helped.

Cheers thanks again for helping, it helped in ruling out options and pushed me to find an alternative!