As discussed at the beginning of the section, during the modeling process, you might need to draw a 2D shape (that will be extruded or swept, for example) on a generally inclined XY plane. Any transformation can be broken down to rotation and translation motions, so in this section and the next one, we will discuss how to rotate and translate the UCS.

You can rotate the UCS around any of the three main axes by using the UCS rotation buttons found in the Coordinates panel. The following figure shows the location of the buttons:

To rotate the UCS, simply click on the button with the desired rotation axis as shown in the following step-by-step example:

1. Click on the desired UCS axis rotation button (for example, rotate around the z axis).
2. Use mouse movement to specify the rotation angle; alternatively, you can type the desired rotation angle using the keyboard then press Enter.
3. When you arrive at the desired angle click again. The command will terminate and the UCS will be rotated as shown in the following figure.

The following figure shows an illustration of the previous steps:

Now that we have seen how to rotate the UCS, let's take a look at how to translate it.