Duplicate and Move Pivot changing and/or translating a surface

[amandaallsion.lila]

A co-worker just shared with me a surface that is behaving strangely when duplicated, and also seems to have strange behavior with the move pivot tool. We cannot figure out why this is happening. Does anyone know what may be the reason for this?

Using Zero transforms does clear/stop this from happening, but I don't understand why zero transforms is needed to prevent this. We noticed even more strange behavior on a trim convert created from the original deviant surface.

With Duplicate:

On the original surface, Duplicate is slightly scaling and shifting the surface. On the trim convert created from that original surface, Duplicate moves that one much more - over 3777mm, and also changes in size.

With Move Pivot:

The surfaces are moving in addition to the pivots moving, but they are also moving in different directions/scales.

This is all happening on his computer, and on mine as well. 

I noticed that there is a scale pivot, and a rotate pivot, and that they are at different locations on the original surface. I'm not sure if this may be causing the issue, but it doesn't seem like that should. I'm also not sure how they were created in different locations in the first place from a trim convert. I was told the original surface was a trim convert created from a small section of a large sphere. On the trim convert created from this original surface, the pivot is located far out of view of the grid/perspective camera, although the scale and rotate pivots are the same on that one.

As a side note, I didn't even realize the scale and rotate pivots could be unique. Does anyone know where/how separate scale and rotate pivots are used?

I'm happy to send a wire, but I forget how to send that. Thank you!

[amandaallsion.lila]

Thank you for your message. I have never heard of the tools you are talking about, and am wondering if you are talking about Alias? I also have never seen this behavior before, and since the unusual behavior could be duplicated and was not simply a glitch that resolved with a restart, I was hoping someone may be able to enlighten me as to why the duplicate function was distorting/modifying a surface. It was obvious it was happening, but if a surface were to only slightly modify upon duplication, it could cause big errors in the model that would be unknown for awhile.

[donest]

Just a guess, but, besides doing zero transforms, you might try deleting construction history on the original surface before duplicating..