How do I change the pivot point of a face?

Support Modeling
1

Have blender 2.69 and from a mesh I have two side by side faces selected. When I rotate them (as a selected pair) they rotate from a center pivot point. I want them to rotate from their edge. So my question is how do I change the pivot point of a face?

Attached you can see what I DON’T want it to do: rotate from the faces center.

I want these two face to rotate from their left edge.

2

the best wat to solve this is to rotate around the 3d cursor. position the cursor at the point you want the rotatoin and in the lower menu bar immidiatly to the left of the manipulator widget tools there is a drop down menu open it and then select 3D cursor from the options
and your good to go :slight_smile:

3

Small Troll, that worked by selecting pivot point at 3d Cursor, however it wasn’t easy getting the 3d cursor exactly where I wanted it. Thank you.

4

Pivot point is not tied to any element, it’s the setting in the pivot menu like mentioned.
But pivot point is only part of the story when doing rotations because you usually want to do it along some axis. That’s where the next menu on the header comes in. If you want to do rotation along some other axis that is aligned with one of the Global axes, you need to change the transform orientation to get the axes aligned. It’s also possible to make a custom transform orientation by selecting a mesh element and pressing ctrl+alt+space.

For example, you have a face rotated to some orientation and you want to rotate it 90° along one of its edges. Couple of ways to do that. You could:

  • switch to active element pivot (alt+period), switch TO to ‘normal’ (alt+space), select the face, change select mode to edge (ctrl+tab), and then select the edge last, press R to rotate, then axis key twice (xx/yy/zz) and then type in 90 (and - to switch direction). The order you input axis, amount and direction doesn’t matter.
  • select the edge, snap the 3d cursor to it with shift+S -> cursor to selected, make a custom TO with ctrl+alt+space, switch pivot point to 3d cursor (period) and then again, R,xx/yy/zz, 90.