I need some help please with gmax.I have made a drill rig using Spline -LINE. I've got all the 4 sides, tapered it with ROTATE (probably the long way .. found a Taper tool!).I now have all the 4 bits leaning together but....How do I WELD the 4 sides together ??I've used GROUP but there are a few bits that seem a little bit apart.I looked at gmax help but got very confused with vertex's, splines, mesh etc.. Basically i'm trying to SNAP the edges together so there are not any gaps..ThanksGarry:-(

This answer may be off because I'm not perfectly seeing your goal, but ....you first need to make the four "lines" one object. Do that with the attach command.Select one of them...convert to editable poly if you haven't..then find attach, click it. Then go and click on each of the other 3 lines.Now you have one object. Once you enter vertex subobject mode, You should be able to click on two vertices you wish to see "snapped" together, and then click on "collapse". Vertices within a mesh can be "welded", but in editable poly that only works at a border. If you wish to pursue welding, use editable mesh, rather than editable poly.collapsing puts one vertex in the middle of the other two.welding replaces two co-incident vertices with one.Good luck!Bob

Thanks Bob,I'm off to try it out. I've attached a pic showing what i'm on aboutThis must be a long winded way of doing it ! (see pic)I've got it on my offshore platform but obviously any help appreciated.cheersGarry (UK)

Ok, first problem is I thought you were using the show mesh feature of the lines, and they really weren't lines at all, but cylinders.Now that it seems you are working in 2d...I may have given you weak advice. I've never worked that way, so I'm unsure. I still expect welding or collapsing is the approach but I just don't work in 2d very much.Good luck...B

Hi Bob,My cylinders ( of which there is one, seemed to work ok..).I'm going to use your ideas though and see what I can make.I used to use gmax in fs2002 but left it alone while I got to grips with fs2004 and read up on design etc. Back now trying to fathom out gmax .. (I found loads and loads of good tutorials for fsTrainz .. and good few tips from arno and friends .. mainly though the Trainz , via google search, seem to help better ... maybe it's just me!)... I should change allegiance and become a choo choo man...anyway, here's what i'm doing.. It is chevron's Ninian Central production platform which I was on from 78 to 89. I've done a version before (ncp.zip) which I know is on flightsim.com , maybe on hereIf you have time , have a look and give me a brief guide to building the damn thing !!!!cheers againGarry

First let me say this is an interesting object...I assume you are working on the crane like protrusions?. I'd try something before you get too far into it...instead of using lines, make a simple block the shape of the crane. Convert to edit poly, enter poly mode and select the end poly....scale it to the basic shape. (alternately you can apply a taper modifier to the box) Make a texture of the crane side. Make a gmax material by assigning that texture to the diffuse map. Apply that material to all sides of the object. Clone the object, and apply the normals modifier, and click flip normals.Make a copy of that texture for use in fs...create an alpha channel to that texture that consists of the spaces between the "spars". convert to dxt1 using imagetool. It may look odd in gmax, but I bet it'll look cool in fs, and you'll have a small number of polygons.Bob

Right o!u make it sound so simple!!I take onboard what your are saying..those 'cranes' are the flare booms ... but , as u see in the orignalthere are 2 cranes (north and south) that are similar in design that stick up from the main deck.I'll try it out this weekend , have a fiddle and a few beers, and hopefully monday put something up on this forum so u can give your considered judgement......I can see the way i'm going at the moment ... more polygons than a b747 (oops). Still, this looks way better than the one I did 2 years ago ... couldn't work on that one as i'd got rid of the original gmax file. (see pic) next thing... landable helideck ... aaarrrggghhhhh!!!:-newburn thanks for your advicegarry

Garry, you're most welcome, I learn more as I think about lots of different projects, so these threads are usually win-win. As far as the helideck....don't sweat it for a second. Its the easiest thing in the world for fs2004. You just make a polygon where you want the hard surface to be, and then run the gmax attachtool script. I'm at work, so I'm trying to remember, but it should be in the tools menu and something like run script button. One of the options is platform! The polygon itself wont show in fs, but a hardness will be applied at the location of the poly.Bob

bob ... The easy bit!!!!! Thanks friend.. I've got that script installed so I'll give it a go..THEN. ... I'll acutally do some proper gmax stuff !!!have a nice dayThanksGarry:(