The Cylinder primitive provides the user with a simple method for creating cylinders or tubes. There are many paramaters available to the user to create variations on the default 1 meter cylinder. By dragging in the 3D viewport with the Cylinder tool active MODO the user can create the initial end cap for the cylinder. Once the initial cap is created, clicking away from one of the handles will snap that handle to the mouse position so that the user can add dimension to the shape, or simply change the current values.
There are also "Alternate" commands assigned to all of the Primitive Tool icons. The alternate commands allow you to CTRL click on the icon to quickly create a unit primitive without interacting with the tool or SHIFT click the icon to create a unit primitive inside a new Mesh Item layer.
The parameters for the cylinder tool include:
Position X,Y,Z: These three values establish the location for the center of the cylinder.
Radius X,Y,Z: These three values are used to establish the dimensions of the cylinder based on the radius from the center position.
Sides: This value determines how many edges are used to define the cylinder's circumference. The larger the number of sides, the smoother the cylinder will appear. If you plan to use subdivision surfaces on the cylinder, use a low number.
Segments: By default the primitive cylinder uses 12 segments. By increasing this value you can increase the number of "cuts" along the cylinder. This is useful if you plan to deform the cylinder as these segments act as hinges during deformation operations.
Axis: This X,Y,Z choice allows you to quickly change the orientation of the primitive.
Make UVs: When this button is active a UV map will be automatically generated for the geometry created with the tool. This is a very useful option if you plan to UV map the model you are creating from the primitive as it provides a baseline UV map that you can massage later in the modeling process. In many cases this can reduce the amount of work required to map the model.
Min XYZ/Max XYZ: Users may also define a cylinder based on specific X, Y and Z bounding box locations in 3D space which can be specified here. This makes it easy to place the cylinderon the ground plane for instance by making the 'Min Y' value '0' and the 'Max Y' value '1m'.
TIP: The Cylinder primitive supports symmetrical creation. When Symmetry is activated, creating the primitive shape will create an identical version across the specified axis.
