I'm a previous MAX User. In MAX to recalculate the Bounding box of a modified object and reset it's transorm matrices you could simply use 'reset Xform' This worked in MAX by making that object in it's modifed and translated postion reset to World Space.
Freeze transoform and Reset Transform seem to be doing the same thing kinda but you have to manually move the object back to 0,0,0 before you freeze it's transform and then you can get back to it's old state by using reset transform. What's really going on here and what should I do make an object away from 0,0,0 realize that's it's translation point is from the center of it's bounding box and yes it's 10 units away from 0,0,0,
Freeze transformation freezes in relation to the world. But why do you need to recalculate the bounding box?
try hitting insert and moving th thepivot! Also doing a mel script that querries the bounding box and moves the pivot accordingly isnt hard (i think theres a script on this site for pivot toolsets).
Yes and maya asumes the pivot to be in 0 0 0 when you strat modelling anything!
As to why you should recalculate the bounding box...
If you don't the modified "new" object has a translation value of 0,0,0 even if it's a mile away from the world 0,0,0 and centering the pivot doesn't seem to change this in MAYA. In MAX that world measurement is always done from the pivot point which I think makes much more sense personally.
Maya is great in that it gives you access as far as I can tell to much more going on behind the scenens than other 3D apps.; yet with that it generates a lot of objects and nodes to keep track of and I don't want to have to duplicate curves and surfaces constantly for Construciton History etc. and then later after assembling a scene and needing a collapsed object, have to physically move it back to 0,0,0 before I Freeze it's translation values.
Well yes i know max uses the pivot but this would cause problems if you actualy keyed your pivot wich is possible in maya!
Also this makes animation a bit more intuitive because you can makeit so that 0 is the default opsition no matter whare it actualy is in the scene.
Ok now i see what you are driving after you are concerned of the local accuracy and since your objects are far away... dont worry the local cordinates are a bit more complex in maya the shape has its own ones. but they kindof do get distorted by this sometimes.
Anyway what you want is a mel script that takes the object moves its pivot to the center, centers to 0 0 0 and moves back no problem use getattr to get the cordinates store in a vector and put inside a for($element in $selection) type loop use settatr , freeze and settattr again. Read the man pages for ls, for a simple example of one of theese loops.
I'm impressed you were able to figure out what I was getting at after re-reading my posts. Yes that script would be useful. I guess I'll have to add mel to my arsenal as well as MAXscript. Not much time left to cook dinner though...
Thanks again,
Jason Brummett
P.S. at first glance Mel looks pretty similar to MAXscript, almost too close. It might be easy to confuse both languages if adopting each one together. I think I'll wait a bit until I fully understand how MAYA works like I do MAX. Much easier to create scripts when you know whats going on behind the scenes!