What is with the maximum size of a prim?

Since I cannot find any docs on the content creation interface for Second Life I am left wondering what I am doing wrong in the build/edit area. I cannot seem to get any dimension of a prim beyond a 10 meter limit. What am I doing wrong?

My experience in 3D makes this seem rather odd. How do you make a larger object? With the prim limit often low in a parcel this creates a situation that makes even simple objects rather prim intensive. I am sure I am missing some setting or combination I don't know what half of the settings do some are familiar because of my experience with other software but Second Life has avery unique approach to 3D and surface construction.

Lay it on me.

10 meters is a hardcoded limit on any prim's dimension. If I understand correctly, this is due to physical collisions calculations: they are increasingly more difficult to calculate if the prim is bigger.

Actually, this limit makes you find out creative ways to create big structures. What did you have in mind, specifically?

The maximum size of the BASE prim is 10x10x10m. So the largest one-prim hemisphere you can make is 10x10x5m.

The limitation is nessessary otherwise you'll have people making prims that measure 256x256x4096m. That will for most intents and purposes completely block out one sim.

There are no official documentation on the user interface. The Lindens are too busy patching bugs, mending holes and trying to make money. However there are some articles in SLUniverse.

http://www.sluniverse.com/kb/default.aspx

If you need general support info.

http://secondlife.com/tiki/tiki-index.php?page=Guides

If you want to dabble with the scripting language. Some of the information here is also relevant to building.

http://secondlife.com/badgeo/wakka.php?wakka=HomePage

If you're interested in the history of SL.

http://history.secondserver.net/index.php/Main_Page

There are a few shapes in SL that have dimensions of no more than 10M in any direction, but which yield an object greater than 10 M across. For example, there is a way to twist a torus around to form a flat, circular prim that is 20M in diameter. It has no thickness, and can only be textured nicely on one side, but it can be done.

In general however, to make anuthing larger than 10M in any direction, you have to build it out of smaller parts, like leggo bricks.

Trying to make a large dome is going to cause me headache, I can just see it now.

ive made very large pyramids and domes with interlocking prisms flatened out into traingular panels..

think the epcot dome at disney and you will have a good idea on how to make a large dome..

this is VERY prim intensive though... but fun to leave in sandboxes, I got ALOT of comments from people on my 100x100x100 pyramid before it got wiped...

Please don't leave such large and high-prim objects in sandboxes.

There is a free to cheap scripted building tool called Shapemaker that can create globes, hemispherical domes, rings, and other overly large shapes, using multiple prims as building blocks. I seem to recall it's less than L$10. Honestly, I haven't had a lot of luck using it, but I haven't tried very hard to learn the tool, as I enjoy doing such things by hand. Others claim it is very useful, though. Such structures are not perfect, and do tend to have a lot of prims.

You may want to look at a building that I created, for ideas on making larger structures. Look for the "NCD Embassy" in the "Kitsune" sim, on the North edge of Furnation. It features a 20M diameter round tower, with a blue glass dome covering it. That structure was made entirely by hand. No scripted tools. I made it by using techniques that Chosen Few discussed in forum articles here.

Look up Buckminster Fuller and Geodesic domes for large spheres. He's the guy who figgered out how to do it.

A simple example is a cube 10x10x0.5 with Top Shear 0.5 in both X and Y.

Highly recommended! Look at Cadroe Murphy's profile in Find for the location in world. The tool is cone-shaped on the platform there. Just checked and yes, it's $10.

I've used it to create circular decks greater than 10m in diameter. very easy. And I played with the sphere generator.

It's worth it for the entertainment value alone to watch it build.

hehe...ok, I didnt phrase that right...

should have said "before I whiped it"

I basically built the thing as an exercise for myself, and then was building inside it for a while on another project. I always clear my work out of a sandbox when I leave, because the first time I didnt...and have several hundred unlinked prims in my lost and found the next time I logged in! (which is a good lesson to you new folks...)