Mirror Modifier confusion

hi all. i’m messing about trying to create another spaceship, so as usual i’m building her left half and using mirror mods in the time-honoured method. basically at the mo i’m just blocking her shape, adding basic forms and mirroring. so, i do the fuselage, mirrored, no bother (links, not big pics, for readability) :
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/2662/mirr2.jpg

and i’ve got weapons pylons blocked, mirrored, no bother :
http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/9366/mirr1j.jpg

…then i create a sphere, distort it a bit to start making an Apache-esque radar, mirror it…and it puts the mirrored object in a totally different place :
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/5033/mirr3.jpg

in the immortal words of The Hurricane, what’s up wit dat?!

i feel i’m missing something obvious, but i can’t for the life of me work it out.

any idea?

many thanks…

Sounds like you need to apply location rotation on your object, then it will mirror correctly

cheers Craig. when i set up the object i was in side view and did a “align to view” on is, as i wanted it sideways : is this the cause? if so, it seems a flaw to me that that operation would in effect redefine the object’s axes.
or am i misunderstanding and the Mirror mod actually refers to the local axes, as opposed to the global axes, as i assumed?

yes this is the cause, and your right in thinking it works on the local axis. you could simply fix it by selecting the Y or Z axis in the modifier, but this could get messy when you come to animate or join sections of mesh. as a rule i will always reset the rotation and scale of an object if i mess around with it in object mode (mostly, sometimes i forget and have some wtf moments!)

thanks Small Troll