View Panes (pains!)
 

1. There are times when I need to view my object from the bottom or *other side* in the orthographic views. There must be a way to create views for these reasons (without actually ROTATING the object)...

2. In mucking around with the views I have also done something to my side view pane. When Maya loads, it reports that a "suitable camera for side view" was not found, so it creates a default view. But I guess if someone can help with the first question, I can probably fix this problem.

Thanks,
-- Dan

I think I know the answer to this one (question 1), let me try:

1.- click "Create>Cameras>Camera options" (the camera options is the little square next to "Camera")

2.- Inside the options click "Edit>Reset Settings".

3.- scroll to the very bottom of that window and check the box that says "Orthographic".

4.- click "Create"

5.- now you should see the borders of a square in the perspective view

6.- pick a panel where you want to display the contents of the camera that you just created and click "Panels>Orthographic>Camera1"

7.- now in that same panel click "View>Select camera"

8.- open the atribute editor and under the tab "camera1" look for "Rotate"; next to that you have 3 text boxes, change the number inside the second one (the y axis) to -90.

9.- now next to "Translate" change the contents of the first box to 20 or 30 or whatever number you want that is bigger than the objects in your scene.

10.- now you have a orthographic camera for the right side, I guess you would want to rename it "Right" or "camera_Right" or something like that. To create a camera for the bottom or for the back just change the values on other axis, like for exame, for the back camera you would rotate 180 and translate -20 on the z axis.

I hope that helps you figure out the 2nd question because I don't understand what you are trying to say.