changing the scaling axis...
 

Guys I am pulling my hair out trying to scale some verts along an axis of MY chosing.

I don't understand why the rotation axis is treated differently them the tranlation axis.

I mean if I parent an object to another object then the "local" translation axis of the child becomes the same as the "object" translation axis of the parent.

This all work fine a dandy. When I select vertices for instance and chose "local" axis for translation I can move the verts along the object axis of the parent.

BUT when I switch to scale or rotation mode the axis goes all katywompus! It does not even match the world axis. I have no friggin clue what it is alining too.

It is so friggin annoying. I have a group of vertices that should all be in a plane. But they have gotten non-planner. I just want to parent the object to a plane and then scale the verts so they are planner.

The other thing I tried and failed to do was create a planner surface on top of the surface with the verts and then snap them along the normal of the planner surface.

NO JOY!

There has got to be a way to grab a group of vertices and make them friggin planner some other way then trying to grab each feckin one and nudge it back and forth until the surface is planner again!

I spent 7 hours trying to get 15 vertices flat today. I was ready to throw the computer against the wall!

grab all the verts and scale them in one direction toward the center box on the manipulator and they will all line up, one you have them lined Up either snap or rotate them to the place you need them.

thanks but this method does not work if the verts you are trying to scale flat do not lie in a plane orthagonal to the axis you scale in. Hence this is why I need to CHANGE the scaling axis like I can change the translation axis.

If the scale axis is not close to normal to the plane the verts are in they go all catywumpus when you scale them and the entire surface gets wanked.

I'll post some pics.

I am using maya 8.5 and I can swear I was though all this in the past and in an older version of maya if you parent objects then the child object gets the axis translations of the parent - ALL of them : scale, translation, rotation. But in maya 8.5 it seems ONLY the translation axis is shared between the parent and child and rotation and scaling for pixels reverts to the childs, which is a stupid and a major frickin annoyance!

Okay I figured it out.

I have gone through this several times so I am going to make a video of it and post it.

Parenting an object to another and using local axis will share the parents translate axis.

To share the rotation and scaling axis the trick is to freeze transforn on the child object after parenting it.

It is a really handy technique.

Sorry, did you make a vid of this in the end?

i use this method as well. but is it 100% accurate? it seems like it could be off a little. is it as accurate as say, snapping to a grid? do the verts line up exactly or just damn close?

They will line up just as if you snapped to grid.

I have not got around to making a vid of it yet.

I'll try to get it posted here in a couple days. I am working on a couple projects atm.