Thanks Ross and Mirjman. Those are some great pointers!

Molly, with the rotate tool.. try to put it on a the side of something that is the same as the side of the way you want to rotate and hold down the shift key and it will stay in that configuration and let you place it on the area you want to rotate. OR make it a group and put the Move TOOL on the little red + symbols and rotate that way.

Thanks, ilay7k. I will try those techniques out.

I have imported a roundish object from Sketchup into Maya, and the model is squarish rather than smooth when rendered.

Is there some way to quickly increase the geometry to make an ultra smooth render?

Thanks for the help guys. That center point script sounds like a godsend. Thanks a million.

As to what I meant by being unable to connect things, case in point, yesterday I was trying to join 2 peices. A cylinder to an extruded piece that was part you touch on a knob. So I was trying to place the little cylinder and then intersect them and delete the little cylinder. But for the life of me I couldn't grab the cylinder by the part I wanted.. and then I couldn't get it to connect where I wanted. So I had to make a rig like thing out of a flat plane and try to use that to guide the piece in place where I wanted. It was a nightmare.. and there always seems to be these kind of measuring and placement issues. I guess maybe it's just something you learn to plan around over time when you are building objects.

Bungo, one thing that helps me a lot now and took me a long time to learn is to use the arrow keys when moving objects. Get the move tool, click the object you want to move(something thats either double clicked -- so what you want is blue -- or grouped and the group selected) click it once with the move tool.. then hit the arrow key you want to move in the direction you need.

The other thing that is really useful and scary is the outliner.. just keep working with it. It is really powerful. It does things you couldn't do any other way. It also helps you find pieces you hid and can't find anymore.

If you have any quesions PM me... I am a fellow noob so I don't mind helping. I know your pain.

One problem I have is trying to place things together on a center point. Or when you want 2 things to connect in a way the inference system isn't what you want. Does anyone have any tips for things like this?

Thanks for the explanation. That's very good to know.

I almost hurt my brain on that one. I think my spirits broken. haha

Nevermind.

I think I figured out what the problem was. I think it was because my model was too small. I don't understand why that makes a difference in a computer environment though?

I am making a flat kind of knob shape that would have little knurled indentations for gripping, and when I try to intersect some little cylinders that I duplicated all around the knob, the geometry keeps getting screwed-up so there are missing pieces on all the little knob knurls and I can't repair the geometry.

Does anyone have any tips how I might avoid this problem? I would be eternally grateful!