From the course: Modeling an F1 Wheel in Maya

Setting the scene units - Maya Tutorial

From the course: Modeling an F1 Wheel in Maya

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Setting the scene units

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Before we get started with modeling in Maya, it's a good idea to set our seam units and scale correctly. I want to go into our Top view. And in the automotive world, the x is always along the horizontal axis. And the y is always along the vertical axis. And the z is in the missing axis, with the positive direction being from the screen towards me. So, if we go up to Windows> Settings and preferences>Preferences. Under settings we want to make sure that the world coordinate system z is checked on and we're working in centimeters. I'm going to say Save to this. Then we're going to go to Display>Grid. Now, typically in the automating world, we have a good line showing every 100 millimeters in the horizontal and the vertical axis. So, we're going to set our grid lines to every ten units, one unit being a centimeter or ten millimeters, that would equate to 100 millimeters. We're going to set our subdivisions to one. And our length and width we can set to 25. This just represents how many grids we'll see in model space. Apply and close. If we zoom right in here. Let's do a quick check, let's go to Create>Measure Tools> Distance Tool, I want to hold down the x for grid and it will snap right to the corner of that grid. And one more time here, we have ten units, let's do the same thing for the vertical, and we have ten units in the vertical, so now the grid and the units are set correctly for an automotive component, now, this is very important. Because, as we send this data on to another CAD system downstream. It's important to set units and scale correctly, before we start modeling. Because this data will be sent to another CAD system downstream. And we just want to make sure that they don't have to rework or rescale the component when they import that data.

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