7. Now click (hold) and drag to draw a box. Now adjust the size with X, Y and Z field (Red) to “5,0″, “5,0″, “0,5″ (3ds max uses the “,” sign for size or position of a prim). You can move or rotate whole screen (green) to look at your design from a different angle. If you have a 3 button mouse (with scroll wheel), you can use the middle button to zoom in or out.

If you de-select a prim and you want to see information of a specific prim, just select that prim and click the second 3dmax tab (Red). With position fields (Green) you can adjust a prim’s position. This way you can place it exactly where you want it…

if you “right-click” (3 button mouse, far right button) a prim you can choose a 3dmax option (Red) either “Move” or “Rotate”

By using 3d Max “Snap” feauture, you can easy align all prims perfectly. To turn on snap mode, Aactivate the snap tool bar.

Make sure “3D Snap” (Red arrow) and “vertex snapping” (green arrow) are active. Then put the “cross” on a corner of a prim and click (and hold) left mousebutton and drag SLOWLY..!! to te corner you want to align with..

In “Rotate” mode you can rotate a prim along its X, Y or Z axis the same way its done in-world. Now try to crate something like this.

When creating a new prim ALWAY’S click the “SLPrim2″ button (step 5) each prim has a different UUID number (search on Secondlife.com what this means) this way second Life can separate each prim from each other. Do not copy or duplicate a prim, this could cause problems when importing in to Second Life (more on this tut later).

The Roof: the left part in “Rotate” mode, X=-35 (don’t forget the minus sign). The right side X=35. this will rotate the prim along its X axis by 35 degrees. This way, left side and right side have the same rotate angle.

Your design does not have to be exactly the same as on the pictures, how its done is more important.

But if you start to make more complex designs, you have to use “layers” within 3D max… For Example “base” or “groundfloor”, this is the TOTAL size of your design, this way you can check if your design fits on a specific SL plot (land: 512 sqm, 1024 sqm etc.)

On top of this you could build “walls” (outside walls and inside walls) create for inside and outside walls separate layers. the same go’s for “windows”, “doors” “balcony”, “roof” etc. In short: cerate a layer for each part of you design, this way its easy to manage your design and import in to SL in parts. In 3d Max you can make layers invisible (open layer list an click “eye” icon, With 3Ds max 2010 this is a “Lightbulb” ).

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