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Using the Working Pivot

Underneath the Adjust Pivot rollout is the Working Pivot rollout. Working Pivots are handy if you want to position an object using a temporary pivot without having to change the default object pivot. To position a Working Pivot, click the Edit Working Pivot button. This enters a mode just like the Affect Pivot Only button described previously, except it works with the working pivot.

After the Working Pivot is in place, you can select to use it instead of the object pivot by clicking the Use Working Pivot button. The Working Pivot stays active until you disable it in the Hierarchy panel. The Working Pivot works for all objects in the scene. When the Working Pivot is active, reminder text “USE WP” appears in all the viewports under the viewport name; when the Edit Working Pivot mode is enabled, this text reads, “EDIT WP.”

Tip

You can quickly enable the Working Pivot by selecting the Working option from the Reference Coordinate System drop-down list in the main toolbar. •

The Working Pivot rollout includes several buttons to help position the Working Pivot. The Align to View button reorients the Working Pivot to the current view. The Reset button moves the Working Pivot to the object pivot location of the selected object or to the view center if no object is selected.

Note

There is only one working pivot that you can use, but it can be used by any selected object. •

The View button enters a mode identified by “EDIT WP” in the viewports that lets you place the Working Pivot anywhere in the current viewport by simply clicking where it should be. This is great for visually eyeballing the Working Pivots location. The Surface button (also identified by the EDIT WP text in the viewport) enters a mode where you can position the Working Pivot on the surface of an object by interactively dragging the cursor over the object surface. The cursor automatically reorients itself to be aligned with the surface normal. If the Align to View option is selected, then the Working Pivot is automatically aligned to the current view.

Transform adjustments

The Hierarchy panel of the Command Panel includes another useful rollout labeled Adjust Transform. This rollout includes another mode that you can use with hierarchies of objects. Clicking the Don't Affect Children button places you in a mode where any transformations of a linked hierarchy don't affect the children. Typically, transformations are applied to all linked children of a hierarchy, but this mode disables that.

The Adjust Transform rollout also includes two buttons that allow you to reset the Local Coordinate System and scale percentage. These buttons set the current orientation of an object as the World coordinate or as the 100 percent standard. For example, if you select an object, move it 30 units to the left, and scale it to 200 percent, these values are displayed in the coordinate fields on the status bar. Clicking the Reset Transform and Reset Scale buttons resets these values to 0 and 100 percent.

You use the Reset Scale button to reset the scale values for an object that has been scaled using non-uniform scaling. Non-uniform scaling can cause problems for child objects that inherit this type of scaling, such as shortening the links. The Reset Scale button can remedy these problems by resetting the parent's scaling values. When the scale is reset, you won't see a visible change to the object, but if you open the Scale Transform Type-In dialog box while the scale is being reset, you see the absolute local values being set back to 100 each.

Tip

If you are using an object that has been non-uniformly scaled, using Reset Scale before the item is linked saves you some headaches if you plan on using modifiers. •

Using the Reset XForm utility

You also can reset transform values using the Reset XForm utility. To use this utility, open the Utility panel and click the Reset XForm button, which is one of the default buttons. The benefit of this utility is that you can reset the transform