Making pipe - Newbie prim-challenged

I'm trying to create some bent pipe segments, and having trouble visualizing what I need to do.

I wanted to start with a section of round pipe, with a 45 degree bend in it. What's the best approach? Does it have to be 3 prims (I'm ignoring the sculpty option for the moment)? And what base prim is best to start with for the bend itself then?

Grrr....I hate asking stupid questions.

This will require you to align cylinders with an intervening torus. The torus will have to be path cut to the angle you want, and sized for the radius of the bend you want. It is not a simple thing to do.

Whenever I want to lay some pipe, I use Lex Neva's free Pipemaker system. It takes a little getting used to, but once you master it, you can lay a lot of pipe in a hurry, and it does all the calculations for you to make the torii and cylinders to match. He gives it away for free in his store.

Does the pipe have to be hollow, or just look like pipe from the outside? If the latter, you can use a sphere at the bend instead of a torus. Also, you can try using a Tube instead of a cylinder.

If you need something exotic to fit just perfect, you might need to try a sculpty.

Thanks.

It doesn't need to be hollow, just look right from the outside. Something like a firemain on a bulkhead, or something similar.

I'll play with spheres, torii, and tubes and see what happens. It's frustrating because it should be simple, and I'm not familiar enough with the prims to just see what I need to do.

Prims do take a little getting used to. I would always suggest just taking our prims and playing with them. See what shapes you can come up with. This will also help when you start building more prim effective items, as you will have a better idea there you can use one prim rather than several.

Good luck in you building efforts.

You might give Lex Neva's free PipeMaker tool a try. Makes it very easy to create smooth connected pipe shapes in all sorts of custom configurations.

Here is a link to a forum thread with the free script, but it'd probably be easier to look in Lex's profile and grab a copy in-world.

/54/cc/86676/1.html