Tips on working at an 'angle'

In my home island of Maui, about everything has to be built with a starting Z rotation of anywhere between 20 and 170 degrees.

Of course the positioning numbers become pretty much useless after that and even trying to make adjustments using the x and y selection moves everything at an angle.

So basically, everything has to be built 'by the eye' which is very difficult to do as everything looks different depending of where you look at it from.

I hope I made some sense.

Any tips on making things align without spending hours upon hours?

Thanks!

- T -

When I built my first large build in Butsu... some 268 meters long, the centerline of the build was angled at 347 degrees in order to maximize the use of the available space.

What I found to be most functional and successful for me was to build entire "units" at an orientation of 90/270 degrees, link them and then move and rotate these units into place. This sort of modular construction proved to be very effective - most effective when I actually did some off-world/real world pen and paper layout work ahead of time.

Hopefully this idea helps.

That makes total sense! A modular build will definitely work in what I am doing.

Thanks!

- T -

Those odd angles can definitely be a nuisance. I've also used the method that Korg's described and I find it works well for me.

Of course, the geometry whizes in SL probably breeze through this stuff.

Can't you use a combination of the local axis option with always copying prims rather than creating new ones? That way, you should be able to set up one prim (say, the floor) at the right angle, and build relative to it.

I'm relatively new, so I could be missing something...

The problem with this is when in local axis only the Position Arrows, or Rotation rings allow the movement. The typed in amounts of movement stay in Global, so thats why I have a calculator always handy when building

Of course building on angles and slopes is always a challenge. I have a place on a steep hill in Tupi that has proven to be a pain for my first two ideas. I finally set out a slew of cylendars at 10x10x10 and created a nice little multi leveled build with ramps. ^^

Odd, delete didn't work on Lenneth's post when I was logged in as that account... anyway If you do go to Tupi you'll notice my little home nearly in the center of the sim. ^^

Really? That's not cool. Well, I guess that kills my idea then.

As for doing the math, yuck. Sines and cosines and tangents, oh my.

Once you DO get things aligned, if there's ever any chance of it moving, link it to an unrotated prim that's aligned to the grid. With this prim as the root, it's easy to get it back in place or re-align it with other modules linked to similarly unrotated prims.