@honoluludesktop said:

If you can draw, or move your component to the desired origin, this will rotate the component's z axis on its origin to what ever you can point to.

I'm having trouble making this work. How do you know where the component's origin is? It doesn't seem to point my shape along the necessary line, but always at a strange angle to it.

Thanks for all the input, I just returned from three weeks of field work and will give these ideas a try. I am also interested in creating/working with someone on a script that will take my data in the format below and create a series of cone frusta automatically. I have very limited experience with programming however. The data below is an example of two conic frusta oriented in x,y,z, space.

Data Format: Base Top
X Y Z Diam X Y Z Diam
0 0 0 6.5 4 6 10 6.0
4 6 10 5.9 10 12 15 5.0

It is easy enough to re-orient the coordinate system, but is there a way to choose the origin and then align the z-axis (blue) along a known line rather than the x-axis (red)? I could use a feature like this because I want to create an "off axis" cylinder (in the default coordinate space)pointing towards a known point, the base of which is a circle that must be normal to the central axis of the cylinder. The circle tool seems to orient to the XY plane by default, making it problematic to extrude in my intended direction and still remain cylindrical (as of now this direction is where the x-axis(red)is pointing).

The freerotate pugin is another option but is a big clunky. Any other ideas?

I am having trouble creating the exact cone frustum I need. I have been trying to create a circle, either extrude it or use the follow me tool to make a cylinder, the re-scale the upper radius to make it smaller. The scale tool uses a scalar (relative value), however it would be much more convenient to use the absolute radius measurement that I have.

I am modeling the structure of redwood branches as a series of cone frusta. Each branch is composed of many frusta of precise but varying sizes and orientations. My overall goal is to create a script that can read x,y,and z coordinate data and radii for the base and top of each frustum and output a 3d model. I have minimal programming experience so any help on how to best approach the problem would be appreciated. I hope this makes sense.