how to make partial cylinder 3ds max 6

[Navarone]

I am new to 3ds max and I find in some instances the simplist thing you want to do can be the most ellusive and to back it up that there are 10 to 100 different ways to do something.

What I want to do is create a partial cylinder (see attachement) that I can put on the face of my structure. How do I do this? I am looking for the most direct and simplist approach.

Thanks for any help.:sailor:

[Phenex]

Make a cylindar. Select it. Right click > Convert to editable poly.

This will show you an "Editable Poly" rollout in the stack. From that choose either "Vertex" (1) or "Face" (4). Then select the vertices/faces you wanna remove and press delete. Done. :thumb2:

[Navarone]

Hey thanks! Just one problem. If I choose vertices and delete them it also deletes the end faces of the cyclinder leaving me with just an outer skin. Is it supposed to do that?

[Phenex]

Yes. If you don't need to show those faces, it's actually better as it makes the surface easier to "weld" to other surfaces.

If you wanna make a planar face for the deleted faces, choose "Border" from the "Editable Poly" rollout and select the outer most edge (where you deleted the faces from). Then click on "Cap". This will give you a planar surface.

[Navarone]

Hmm... I tried that and it doesn't seem to work for me. It did something. But it didn't cap the ends.

[DDD]

I havent used Max in ages but they have to have a function where you can select vertices and make a poly from it. I cant remember but does max render n-gons? I say that because you can end up with polys with more that 4 vertices (n-gons).

[Navarone]

Don't feel bad I've only been at it for about 2 weeks. I like Solid Works better!:pope:

Let me look thru my 3ds max 6 Bible book maybe there is something in there that will indicate how to cap everything.

:beam:

[unchew]

Make a cylinder and boolean it?

[Phenex]

I don't really see the need to have a "capped" back of the cylinder. Unless ofcourse you need to show it explicitly.

I agree with unchew there btw. You could try Boolean operations.

[Navarone]

Ok, let me try that.:opera:

[ar]

Here's the process:

1. Cut out the faces that you're not using, like you have done already.
You can see that you're left with a cylindrical shape, and from your screenshot it looks like it has six sides.

2. In the Modify panel, and in your polygon edit thing, choose to edit the Sides, not the verticies or faces or anything. Select the little Side, or corner thing, tool.

3. Look at your TOP viewport, and see the six sides that make up the cylinder shape thing.

4. In the Polygon edit thing, locate the Bridge tool, and click on the little box next to it. When that pops up, go to Segments and set the value to 4.

5. Exit out of that pop-up.

6. With the Side edit thing selected, locate the top of the cylinder, and locate the two furthest sides of that (on the top of the curve with the six sides) those are sides 1 and side 6.

7. With the bridge tool clicked, click on side 1 then click on side 6. You can tell that there is now a little flat thing that connects them with 4 segments in it.

8. In the Polygon edit thing, select the Vertices edit box. Then click on Target Weld, and don't do anything else yet.

9. Locate those 4 box segments, and see sides 2-4? That means you can seamlessly close this gap, since there's an even amount of vertices for it to close.

10. With the Target Weld selected, click on Segment 1's corner vertices that is just floating around. Now click on Side 2's vertices that is floating around. This will cap of the top if you continue the process.

[Navarone]

Thanks ar for those step by step instructions. I did a boolean operation instead and it worked out better for me.

Thanks to all who helped.:)

[ar]

Oh... :(

Well, I whipped up a little illustration... before I saw your post...
If it helps any...

[Navarone]

Thanks! Sorry to put you thru all that though. I'am saving the instructions and illustration anyways, you never know when you might need to do this another way.:cool:

[Phenex]

Oh... :(

Well, I whipped up a little illustration... before I saw your post...
If it helps any...

Oh poopy! :(

Thanks for the different approach though :thumb: