I slept threw my geometry and trig classes in highschool, so I also had no idea what these commands did. Trust me, you NEED to learn them if youre going to do any serious work in 3d. But dont worry, they really arent that hard to understand. Heres my sin/cos in a nutshell, if at anypoint my explanation confuses you, skip it and go to the link below, they explain it better...
Sin and cos represent ratios of two sides of a triangle based on a angle. The 'sin' of a angle represents the ratio of the Opposit length over the Hypotenuse length. The 'cos' represents the ratio of the Adjacent lenght over the Hypotenuse length. There is also 'tan', which represents ratio of the Opposite length over the Adjacent length, but you really only need to know sin and cos. Keep in mind were talking about RIGHT <-*edit* triangles here.
Example, the 'Sin' of 45 degrees is roughly 0.7. Meaning if started to draw the first line (hypotenuse) of a triangle at a 45 degree angle, the 'Opposite' side of the triangle (the side opposite the 45 degree angle) would always be 0.7 times as long as the hypotenuse. Knowing such ratios, you can figure out the distance of unknown sides of your triangles.
Check this site out
http://math.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.physics.uoguelph.ca%2Ftutorials%2Ftrig%2Ftrigonom.html
All you need is zeal
