Half-cut Prims

Well I have to admit it's been a very long time since I've actually made a half cut prim. They're the best things ever for making doors, even though you had to take advantage of a bug to make one. I wonder if it's still possible to make them now?


It used to be that if you used the TAB key to move foreward in fields in the edit panel, you could tab into hidden fields and alter them to cut a prim in half and cause the rotation axis to exist in a different place, which was tremendously useful. I still have some half-cut prims in the world in fact, if you go to my lab in Abbotts you can see the large metal doors leading into the lab are half cut prims.


So, is it still possible to make them some other way? And how long has it been impossible to make them the old way?

Thanks!

yep, it still works for all prims with cut I guess. I never knew there was a trick to it though. Just use the 'B' and 'E' cuts, adjusting until the prim is halved.... typically something like B-.375 and E-.775? You have to type them to get it perfect with the box, but the cylinders/spheres halve with ten clicks either way.

I've found the easiest way to manage that is to rez a box, change it to a sphere, dimple it, and change it back to a box.

Thanks for caring DoteDote, but I'm afraid that's not what I was talking about. You see, that's a regular cut, and it's been around for a long time. It cuts a prim in an angular 'pie shape' around the center axis.


What I was talking about, was the ability to create a prim, say a box, and cut it horizontally along the edges. Doing this made the rotational Z axis appear for all intents and purposes to shift to the side, and make doors incredibly easy to create with only one primitive.

Your memory may be failing. What he describes is precisely what you are looking for. The radial cut can cause a prim to be cut in half perfectly straight, and "shift" the center of rotation to the side.
You just need to fiddle with the decimal places a little. You can make perfect cube halves, quarters and three-quarter L shapes if you put in the right numbers. I've been doing this for over a year and it's not a bug.

Eggy, that's not what I'm talking about. It would have the same effect as what I'm talking about, but it's still different.


What you're describing is taking a 50% pie piece out of a prim, so that only half of it remains. That would make it appear like only half is there, and it would make the axis on the side. However, what I was talking about is something different.

I used it to create objects like doors with an axis on the side, however you didn't have to put the axis on the side. You could place it anywhere in the prim.


Regular cutting, which isn't a bug but a feature, involves cutting away at a prim in a pie shape. The type of cutting I'm refering to allowed you to shave off the sides of a prim directly.

You could cause a 10 meter wide prim to appear 5 meters wide, and have the axis at the 1 meter mark, for example.

The technique that Jillian describes does what you're asking, although the dimpling only works along one axis.