Ah, you *were* paying attention. I was hoping someone would notice that the centers of rotation for the arms and bucket had not been changed. When you parent an object, the parent's center is treated as the center of the whole system.

All I did to set up those joints was ungroup the import and parent stuff to each other. (In the advanced file I did alter the orgin values of the pistons, but that is due to the quirks of the "targeting".

Normally, I leave the origins in the "wrong places" for parented objects. This gives me a quick, visual warning that I've selected a child instead of parent when I see something rotating in an unexpected manner, and it means less work for me in bryce...bonus!

OOH, OOH, I just thought of something!!!! Perhaps it is possible to lock the child objects to completely prevent them from being accidentally selected and dragged about. I wonder if a locked child will still follow its parent? Be right back. Yup, it works...I've got a new joint setup method. Thanks for bringing up this topic, I probably never would have thought of locking the children without explaining the process step-by-step to someone else. I've attached an updated version of the advanced Bryce4 file using the new "locked child method".

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Attached: "Digger_Arm_Advanced_Updated.zip" 16KB Message edited on: 08/28/2005 10:35