(Isn't it kinda loony to send a reply to yourself?  anyways...)

    Thanks to all of you for your help.  I now have the source completed and
I ma happy to announce that I have one last frustration left with this
object (which hopefully soon will be joined by even more frustrating
objects).
    What I have basically is a pentagonal pool surrounded on each side by 5
steps which all descend down to the water (think of it as a pentagon with
the center cut out...with the center cut out...with the center cut out (you
get the picture).  I used the Sin/Cos combinations with the 72 degree
suggestion (so as you can see, I took almost everybody's advice) and I made
a nested if/then to do it all.  (Whew, finally, the problem)  No matter what
I do I can't mathematically keep these sections from joining to each other,
so instead of having 5 sides with 5 steps each, it looks like one gigantic
step and I can't get them to show a crack for some grout.  I could use a
difference thingy, but I am beginning to reach a point where I would rather
do something the "hard" way and have it be precise than to do a difference
and have it approximated.  If you would like, I could post the source.  It's
only about 4k now, so it's not too large...  Let me know...
--
Duane

Check out my web page.  I just started, so don't laugh too hard.
www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/8407
e-mail me: ddt### [at] junocom

Duane Tackett wrote in message <35ed11bd.0@news.povray.org>...
>    Now that I have your attention (with the subject line) I have forgotten
>how to do something seemingly very basic:  I nee to translate a line
segment
>into x,y coordinates.  What I need is a 5 sided regular polygon (pentagon
in
>english) and I have forgotten the equation to convert this to x,y points.
>    For instance, I want to have a 5 sided object with sides that are 2
>units in length. I have figured out that the degree of the angle between
>each side is 72 (360 degrees divided by 5 sides) but I can't remember the
>equation to translate this.  I don't want the points, I want an explanation
>so I'll have one less silly question to ask.  Let me know if you can help.
>
>--
>Duane
>
>Check out my web page.  I just started, so don't laugh too hard.
>www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/8407
>e-mail me: ddt### [at] junocom
>
>
>

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