blender.org/education-help/tutorials/getting-started

…clicking on just "A Die" I had NO IDEA wth this tutorial would be about…even if incorrect, I would recommend the title (& incoming links) be "How to create a Dice in Blender"…or even "Creating a Die in Blender (as in Dice that you roll for a game)"…some "correct" singular English just sounds WRONG…I mean "die"…death?…die cast?…oh you mean dice!?…

I suppose that you have to use the box selection tool (Key B) to get the shown vertices. This part is very manual, so that is why I think he says "here's the tricky part". In this particular case, for the semispheres, a circular selection would fit nice. First I would add to the selection all the semisphere vertices, and then remove all the inside semisphere vertices. I have just started in blender, but maybe a circular selection tool already exist.

Good luck, and keep trying.

A:
While in edit mode, press the N-key, and this will bring up a "Transformation Properties" window. It will tell you the x,y,z location of a vert if selected, or the medium if more than one vert is selected.

You can now select on one of the verts of the top of the frame you are trying to align on, and from there you can get the verts location.

Now select one of the verts from the top of your semi-sphere, and it will tell you its x/y/z location. From these two numbers, you can tell how much higher/lower you need to move your semi-sphere in a direction so it it is level. Now select the whole semi-sphere. he x/y/z numbers change naturally, as it is now the medium of the entire object, rather than just the vert you selected, but you know how far you have to move the semi-sphere to align it. You can try this with grab, or you can enter the new location straight into the tranformations properties window.

Naturally, pressing N-Key again will get rid of the window again.

I hope this answers your question. It is important to align the hights well before filling the face, otherwise you may get a crease line in your final render.

Max.

PS:. Maybe easier ways, I'm just a beginner, took me a while to figure out that the hights were the problem in the first place that were causing my creases.

1. HIt Tab to see the Subdivide button. It takes you from Object mode to Edit mode. Im using 2.49b.

2. Shift-F to fill the faces between the cube and the semisphere dots will fail if you dont have the exact vert selection he shows in the photo which includes only the top verts on each semisphere and every vert on the interior border of the cube top. Things I had to do to get this selection were: A) take my semisphere and move the top layer of verts up away from the others before adding it to the cube. This way they are easier to select without accidentally selecting multiple levels of verts in the semisphere (dot) and B) I had to use Shift Left Mouse Click after KEYB to add to the selection because I missed some corners on the cube. Take a hard look at the photo and youll see. And C) you need to go to the correct View the Side view to use B to select all these. Once I got em all in one try then next go around I never could so I did the above tricks.

3. Remember that often it is easier to delete something that got messed up and start over. I did this many many times just generating the Cube and Sphere and again when the dots were wrong.

4. I kept a handy semisphere around that was some distance away from the cube as a source of new dots.

5. When you hit 7 you went to layer 7. Hit 1 to return to layer 1 (For Bill Cosby – is that really you?)

Some Questions
1. How do I get a nice render without the vert's showing?
2. How to align the semisphere tops with the cube top exactly?
3. How to pan and orbit on a laptop wihtout a Numeric Keypad? (Too lazy to plug in a real kbd)

thanks
Greg