im trying to put a cone on top of a sylinder. ive checked anchor based aligning, but the align still just put the objects in the middle of each other. could someone point me in the right direction? or at least in the direction of a tutorial on the subject.

Could use a screeen shot here, but anyway, have you tried using the Attributes grid to line things up?

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All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

so i still have to calculate things? ok. i can do that. just thought i was doing something wrong. i have no idea of how to make a screen shot. feel like a total idiot here

You can screen shot via Paint Shop Pro or PS.
I use an XYZ grid to do the math on paper. Nothing like going back to basics!

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader

All the Woes of a World by Jonathan Icknield aka The Bryster

And in my final hours - I would cling rather to the tattooed hand of kindness - than the unblemished hand of hate...

There are a lot of ways to aligning objects, and probably a lot of tutorials.
Try this tutorial for example http://www.newdawndesigns.com/linda/bryce/btut3.asp

i found i had to make the size of the objects even numbers and also the placements. thank you eh... woman in red... jrceaspluido... wow! i'll look into that and see if i can twist my brain into understanding it. or else i have to do it the bryster way. maybe a good thing after all. sorry for my spelling right now. certain keys on the keyboard works only sometimes