By having the one axis align tool option will reduce a multi step process down to a two step process.
The majority of times I use the move tool combined with the measure tool to achieve the results that the align tool would give if you could be limited to one axis of movement.
What I am hoping to see from this option is the ability to select two face and have them align in a single direction. So first face you select will be moved to the second face without centering the body moving to the target body.
I see a lot of people asking for this feature during my search, but I didn’t see a feature request so I thought I would give it a shot.
No problem, when I get a chance I’ll take screenshots.
As the method goes it pretty simple, I get the distance between two parallel edges or faces, I pin that measurement, I then switch to the move tool where I click the directional arrow and I enter the distance give by the measure tool. The pinned measurement will turn to zero and I remove the pin.
I do this because I quite often find when aligning two body’s by hand to be difficult. I recently created a project for myself for a new workbench that mix’s traditional style with MFT style. I work in inch’s and MFT is metric. Switching between metric and inch was easy and great, but aligning two bodies of two different measurements type proved difficult, and my method was the only practice solution.
with all do respect, I do not like the translate tool, I find it cumbersome to use, and I don’t understand the point of it. Also traditionally the align function or tool has had similar options as the one I’m asking in other programs.
I’m not saying your request is meaningless — on the contrary, I’d also like to see such an improvement in the Align tool. However, in my experience, the Translate tool works differently from Align, and it’s actually better suited for the kind of tasks you described.
Perhaps I didn’t phrase it quite right — my point wasn’t about how you personally use the Move tool, but rather about seeing a situation where aligning objects wouldn’t be possible otherwise. From the screenshot you shared, this doesn’t appear to be the case.
In other words, what I’m looking for is a situation where the requested feature would actually be useful as you see it.
If the end goal is the last screenshot why not use the Align tool and snap it to that face? You can go further by adding variables and control the gap with variables.
I saw another 1 axis request question and I’m kinda wondering how that would work.
Yes, of course, if you really need to lock one or two axis during movement this is the case.
But before you show me your project with imported lots of parts already placed in 2d in right place I didn’t see such a big necessity.
Just because even aligning with projection isn’t the big deal if you have only a couple of such parts. And in case you design every part yourself this isn’t the problem at all.
Alex ask for me to show an example of how I use the measure tool to the line 2 bodies together. What was just for demonstration purposes.
The reason I want to be able constrain the align to one axis is, imagine in the example used that the cube I want to align to is quite larger then one being moved. The smaller cube is in the right area I just need to be touching. If I use the align tool as it is now the small cube will be touching the larger cube, but the smaller cube will now also be center of the larger cube, and that is something I usual don’t want.
Another example would be, I have 3 cubs, 2 large and 1 small. The 2 large cubs form a corner (90 degrees). I need the small cube to touch both of the large cubs. I need the align with 1 cube in the X axis, and the other cube in Z axis, but I want the small cube to maintain at it current Y axis. If there was an option to align in one axis I could simple select X cubs face and use the tool to have the small cube moved to the X cube. And then I could do the same action again and the smaller cube would align to the Z cube. And because am only move the small cube in the one axis it will always maintain its Y axis and its new X axis.
So close to work, the point even snaps to the custom axis as long as outside the bodies. If it just snapped to the surface…
(Add to this an old suggestion thinning the custom axes from the present bloated entity.)
I’m sorry I’m dyslexic and I didn’t full understand what you wanted.
I can align bodies by hand with just the move tool, it is harder to do then if I used the measurement in conjunction with the move tool. Many times with the move tool, it snaps in place and the two bodies look aligned, but they’re actually a fraction of inch off. To get them to actually aligned, I have to zoom in like crazy to line them up.
When I was designing a workbench for myself, where some of parts were in metric and others in inches, it was very difficult to align bodies together. So much so that I came up with the measure tool method to come back the problem.
I hope that gives you more clarity on what I’m requesting. Also if you like I could upload my workbench model.
So the way your custom axis works. Apply the Axis and use translate to snap from axis to the other end of the axis?
Or maybe more elegant way would be just face snap like in Blender.
Also on your other thread Alex mentioned Assembly coming up, maybe that can help. This thread and the request I think just simple copy and paste from Measurement Panel might be the simple request that would work.
I asked for real situations when only with measurements you can achieve result.