Creating Cylindrical Surfaces

You can create a cylinder by extruding a circle along a given direction.

Before you begin: Create a 3D shape containing at least a point.
  1. From the Surface section of the action bar, click Cylinder .
  2. In the Point box, select a point that gives the center of the circle to be extruded.
  3. In the Direction box, specify the desired direction of the cylinder axis.
    You can select a line to take its orientation as the direction or a plane to take its normal as direction. You can also specify the direction by means of X, Y, Z vector components by using the context menu by right-clicking the Direction box.

  4. In the Radius box, enter the radius of the cylinder or use the arrows to change the value.
  5. In Length 1 and Length 2 boxes, enter the values or use the graphic handles to define the start and end limits of the extrusion.


  6. Select the Mirrored Extent check box to extrude the circle in the opposite direction using the same length value as the one defined for the first length.
    Warning:
    • This check box is only available with the Dimension type.
    • When selected, the value for Length 2 is unavailable.
  7. Click Reverse Direction or the red arrow in the work area to display the direction of the cylinder on the other side of the selected point.
  8. Click OK to create the surface.
    The surface (identified as Cylinder.xxx) is added to the tree.