Move alongside a single axis : hover end point to exactly align

[Arnopello]

Hi

The problem that this feature will solve:
When we move a body alongside an axis through the screen arrows, we can only move if we know by how much distance we want it, or by snapping it to the grid if, by chance, our stop point is on a grid snap position.

Translate makes the two points coincide in 3D space (alongside the three axis simultaneously), which I don’t want in this case. I just want it to be aligned through one axis (through one alignment move) or two axis (through two alignment moves).

Brief description of the outcomes that you expect from this feature:
What I feel would be useful - and one of the very few features of Sketchup which I miss - would be to:

1. be able to place the point of origin where we want to align on the body.
2. move the body alongside one of the three axis while the mouse can hover another point within the project, which would be another body angle for example, or the middle point of a segment.
3. the point of origin of the body would then be aligned with the end point alongside that axis (hard to see on my pictures but that point is slightly horizontally offset from the grid).

What can’t you achieve without this feature?
Several situations would gain speed from such a feature. For now, I draw small vertical and horizontal lines where I want this point of origin to end, and I would move it with the moving arrows or translate it, then delete the two lines marking the end point.

• For instance, I may change the height of my piece of furniture feet, and want to realign the inner elements to the middle height of these bodies (because I changed my mind, or because a customer asks so).
• Or I may have complex design with key points not coinciding with the grid (see below) and wanting to position them according to one axis only.
• Or I may have designed an inner element (like on my picture) and, let’s say, I decide to add an external fourth line (you can see three on my pictures). Then, the vertical visual center of my body would change and I would have to recenter it vertically.

For now, I feel that I must have my final design ready on paper before starting working on Shapr3D. And as I use your (by all other means, fabulous) software to also fine-tuning my designs by seeing how they look before tweaking details… I have to move stuff around.

I would not lie, I can work without. It’s just a slight hassle and time consuming task and currently, if one move does not take that much time, having to do it often starts to pile up.
Also, I have to go in 2D view to move my body, draw that two-lines-cross, hope these two lines won’t merge with existing sketches…

So yeah, if we talk about workflow, it would fluidify it.

Thanks for your consideration !

[Istvan]

Hi @Arnopello , thanks for the detailed feature request!

Maybe I misunderstand what you want, but the Move/Rotate tool does exactly what you’ve described:

Also, have you tried the Align tool for aligning bodies?

[Arnopello]

Hi @Istvan

First, quick answer, wasn’t expecting so, I’m impressed! I’ve already witnessed a clear presence of the staff within the forum and that gave me trust in your brand.

About the answers you propose. So I saw that I could move the point of origin like on your video, and I used it in my initial example to set the point I wanted to align. But, if I get it right, that’s just moving the tool and where the move will origin. It does not snap my body to anything while in movement to make that movement stop on another body key point. Am I right or did I miss something?

In the following video, done under Sketchup, he is what you’ll see:

• I select with the move tool some key point of my shape
• I show that I can move in all directions.
• I constraint the axis of movement to vertical (when the dashed line becomes blue).
• I move down or up until I reach a key point on the other shape. Then, my “origin point” becomes aligned vertically with this “point of reference”.

About aligning, I tried also (I the type of person to Google and play with all the tools I’ve got before asking for help). It works segment/face to segment/face, not point to another point. And it seems to also bring the body entirely to the target position. Not just align it alongside a single axis.

Hope to have brought some light to my initial explanations.

[Istvan]

I see! Indeed the center of the Move/Rotate gizmo just repositions and aligns the gizmo according to the geometry.

The Align tool snaps to points whenever it is possible:

The translate tool can be also used to define the vector of the movement:

Does this solve the problem?

While at the first glance it might seem that SketchUp and Shapr3D have some similarities, the workflows and best practices are fundamentally different.

[Arnopello]

About the translate tool solution, it solves half of the situations indeed. I get now better how this tool does work (thought it was “this point to that point” from the tutorials).
However, because it snaps to grid points, and does not take the “virtual snap guides” which you can get by hovering a point (when you get a purple guide to align with the direction of the source segment), it doesn’t work when not aligned to grid.

In the next video you’ll see that, if I take the right starting point of the vector, I can’t get the right end point because it snaps on crossings of the grid which are whether slightly left or right of the vertical target (zooming for smaller grid resolution gives the same, that point is not aligned to horizontally to any millimeter).

Also, I could be in the situation where my end point is neither vertically or horizontally on a crossing grid point, this endpoint being an angle of another body. That would mean that my vector would not be just X/Y/Z but diagonal.

See the two images below : first one everything seems good, second one we see the translate has taken the depth dimention of the current plane into account, and that would not give a vertical movement only.

In the same spirit, in sketch mode, we get this purple guide keeping the alignment with the original position of the point. But it doesn’t snap to horizontal lines of the grid while I move it up or down. See the video below.

This is less a problem as, like I said in initial post, I can draw a little line, align the sketch with that line, then delete the line. The workaround is not as complicated as moving an already existing body which may have received many modifications, so you get to work with it and not start over the sketch.