Connecting spheres with cylinders

Hello,
I am trying to draw multiple spheres connected with cylindrical shapes for a chemistry topic. But I am having difficulties aligning the cylinder in different direction. I would appreciate any help. Thanks

Create one sphere and one cylinder.
Use the move/rotate tool to drag off copies of the cylinder and the spheres-

To move the cylinders… double tap one to invoke the move/rotate tool. If you grab the center point and drag it to one of the spheres, the point should Snap to the center of the sphere.
Using the 3 little arrows that are curved will then swivel the cylinder around the centerpoint of the sphere.
If your cylinder is positioned radial to the sphere before you do this, it will rotate radial to the sphere center. This will allow you to rotate the cylinder in all three axis until it aligns with your next sphere.

Additionally- You can start with a cylinder aligned radially to your first sphere, then drag a copy of the sphere to the other end of the cylinder, this will give you 2 atoms linked with a cylinder radial to both. If you select BOTH the cylinder and one of the spheres, and then snap the centerpoint of the move tool to the center of the other sphere, then the move arrows can be used to swivel a COPY of the cylinder AND the other sphere to a new position and you can type in the angles in 3 dimensions to get precise geometry.

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Hi Saleh! You can use the Align Tool to achieve your goal:
1 draw a linear line with the Line tool at the right direction
2 Select Add menu› Construction Plane › Perpendicular to a Curve at Point
3 Select the linear line and press NEXT to create the C.Plane, then press Done
4 double tap on C.Plane to enter Strict Sketch Mode
5 draw a circle on the plane so that its center is coincident with the endpoint of the linear line
6 Select circular edge of Cylinder » select Align tool from the Transform menu » select circle
» Cylinder will be aligned so that its axis is collinear with the linear line you drew in the beginning.

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