Cutting "L" Shaped Prim

[gregthos]

I am trying to make an "L" shaped prim which I can do however the starting point for he cut is not where I want it to start. Is there a way to manipulate where the cut starts when doing this? 

[Rolig Loon]

The Start and End parameters that you use for cutting a prim only apply relative to the Z (vertical) prim axis.  If that's what you are doing, then yes, you can set Start and End to any values you like between 0.0 and 1.0 to get the cut that you like.

[gregthos]

Thanks for the reply! Maybe I am missing something and will see about recruiting someone with more know how than myself to knock this out. It's just the one prim I am needing. Thanks again! 

[Mollymews]

L-shape prim

Path Cut: B = 0.375. E = 0.625

Hollow: 50 to make a perfect 1/4 hollowed L shape.  Increase/decrease the Hollow as needed

we have to rotate the prim to get the orientation we want. Path cutting is calculated as radius lines from the center of the prim

Edited December 12, 2019 by Mollymews
radius

[gregthos]

I'll give it a shot and ty for posting this. Hoping I don't find a way to mess this up lol

[ChinRey]

On 12/12/2019 at 9:52 PM, gregthos said:

I am trying to make an "L" shaped prim which I can do however the starting point for he cut is not where I want it to start. Is there a way to manipulate where the cut starts when doing this? 

The answer is, as you others have said, no. A pathcut will always be from the endpoints of the profile.

A more detailed explanation (WARNING! Boring theory coming up!):

Pathcut (or "dimple" as it's called if it's a sphere) should probably be called "profile cut" because that's what it is.

All prims start as a profile, a two dimensional "curve". SL supports four different profiles and they are all circles. There are three full circles with 25 (used for the cylinder and the torus), 5 (for cubes and tubes) and 4 (for the wedge and the ring) vertices respectively. The fourth profile is a semicircle and is used for the sphere (and also for a half cylinder prim that isn't officially supported).

Here's a square profile with the vertices marked (Note that although the two end vertices (marked with red and dark blue) are located at the same spot, they are not joined):

What we do when we pathcut, is move the end points of the profile to the center and then (of course) add two more vertices at the "breaking points":

Once we've done that, we can add another modifier to the shape. It's called "hollow" and it adds a second curve around the center. I've not bothered to mark its vertices, I suppose everybody get the idea now:

(Interesting tidbit here btw: It i not possible to make a prim with hollow unless it also has a pathcut.)

But let's forget hollow for now. The simplest way to create an L shape is to cut away exactly one quarter of the profile:

That's not how we usually do it though - for obvious reasons. Instead we cut away three quarters of the profile as Mollymews suggested:

Then we add hollow to remove the bits around the center:

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Edit:

I probably should explain why we can have a hollow prim without pathcut even though we can't. LL "cheated" a little bit there. What we actually get, is a prim with pathcut set to zero. Something ike this (pathcut marked with a black line):

Edited December 14, 2019 by ChinRey