Try directly changing the rotation settings in the side bar instead of using the viewport gizmo.
If the axis you want to rotate doesn’t respect the object’s orientation, then you have a gimbal lock and need to change the rotation order (the mode setting I underlined).
If that doesn’t do it, I have no idea what’s happening and would need to see the scene.
If I change values there it rotates the object. I think you are under the assumption that the geometry has been created as a cylinder in Blender and therefore the axis are defaulted to normal and then I have rotated it. This is not the case. I imported it from CAD. When you do that every single object uses Global X Y Z for rotation on import.
Ok it does actually work properly now using the empty parent object and setting both to ZYX orientations, thank you! The link to read helped a lot. I still found this way more frustrating than it should have been.
I don’t have rights to access the file.
But what you just wrote changes everything.
If the object uses default world rotation, then it’s completely normal that it doesn’t work. It’s not just Blender either, that’s the standard way animation works in non-cad 3D software.
What I would do in a case like this is rotate the knob as flat to the world coordinates as I can make it (for an artistic 3D software, it doesn’t really matter if it’s slightly imperfect). Then, apply the rotation and rotate it back to its original position. Now, it has the rotation data and can actually be animated on its own axis.
Yes, this works best actually but only given that I know the exact angle at which to rotate it. I had seen videos of this being done and didn’t understand them until now but this is 100% the easiest way to do this. This is the method I will be using and teaching and because my students will be the designers and have access to their SolidWorks files they can find these values.
That said. I do think it would help a lot if there was a quick and simple way to reorientate the gumball axis so that you can tell it what is X or Y or Z and let the other axis follow. If I were able to, for example, select two vertices and tell Blender that the vector between them was Y and it reorientated the gumball to that then everything could be done simply and easily in a few clicks.
Now that you mention it, there is a way to do it: the “affect only origins” checkbox
However, the way I wrote is still useful if you don’t know the exact angle, because you can then judge it visually and get it almost perfect in side view.
I’m with you. I also come from SW/Rhino/NX and I started out where you are now.
I’ve learned to live with it by parenting everything (and actually, the Max guy at work does the same), but for the record, I still think Blender’s whole user facing presentation of local space vs world space is completely messed up.
