There will be four doors revolving around the central hub. You have one door so far, and you will make three instances of the door to complete the wheel.

Set up the lesson:

• Continue from the previous lesson, or open start_door_clone.max in the \startup folder.

Adjust the door position and rotation:

1. Activate the Top viewport.
2. Make sure the viewport is set to Wireframe shading mode.
3. Zoom in and select the pivot door.
4. If you need to, move the pivot door so it is centered on the edge of the hub, as illustrated. Rotate the door, if necessary, so it is square to the hub: Click (Select And Rotate), and then on the status bar, set the Z coordinate to 0.0 (right-click the spinner arrows to reset to zero).

   

5. Activate the Perspective viewport by right-clicking it (the door should still be selected).

Create the cloned doors:

1. Right-click the viewport and choose Rotate from the menu.

   

   This right-click menu is called the quad menu. You can use it to access tools from the toolbar and command panel for quicker workflow. You can even customize it to keep your favorite tools right under your fingertips.

2. On the toolbar, click the drop-down arrow for the Reference Coordinate System (View is the default). Choose Pick, then click the Cylinder01 object (the hub) in the viewport.

   

3. On the toolbar, directly next to the Reference Coordinate system drop-down list, choose (Use Transform Coordinate Center) from the Use Center flyout.

   

   This allows you to rotate the pivot door around the cylinder's pivot point, rather than the door’s own pivot.

4. Press A on the keyboard to turn on (Angle Snap), if it isn’t on already.

   On the toolbar, the Angle Snap button highlights.

   

5. Hold down the Shift key and position your cursor over the Z axis in the transform gizmo in the viewport until the axis turns yellow. Then click and drag slowly to rotate the door until Z= 90 degrees in the Coordinate display. Release the mouse button.

   Holding down Shift as you transform an object serves as a quick way to clone the object.

6. On the Clone Options dialog, set Number Of Copies to 3, choose Instance (if necessary), and click OK.

   

   Now there are four doors within the enclosure.

   

   Clone the door to create a wheel of doors.

Change the hub back into a cylinder:

• Select the hub (Cylinder01), and then on the Modify panel, change its Sides value to 12.

  The hub now resembles a cylinder rather than a box.

Save your work:

• Save the scene as my_fourdoor.max.