Solved - Aligning two surfaces

Update from Shapr3d team:
We have just released the new 3d alignment tool feature with the 3.52 app version :partying_face:
This will allow you to simply tap on the body faces to get them snapped together.

Simply update the app and please share your feedback with us.
Here are more details about the feature:


As you can see I have a platform I want to align with a base. By manually tweaking alignment I can get pretty close, but is there a quick way to align the two solids? Thanks!

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I think transfer and then point to point

Do you want the blue object (platform I presume) to sit on top of the angles body?

Are they both angled the same? If yes, then use Translate per 4dxpā€™s reply above. Let us know if you need assistance using Translate.

They are not angled the same, so I was wondering if there was a way to align them that wasnā€™t purely manual. Thanks.

I do not know of a way to easily align. But it can be done manually. Hereā€™s a method that works.
There are several steps involved. If you choose this route, let me know if you need assistance.

Regards, Mike

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Hi!
I think needs to thinking another way
Try to draw again the blue part on the angeled surface , because you will got parelell bodies.
After use the translate , corner to corner
Regards,
A

Hereā€™s a short video on how to align them and using translate snapping them together. https://share.getcloudapp.com/GGuAO771

  1. Select the two faces and check the difference in alignment (works with planar surfaces)

  2. Rotate one of the bodies

  3. Use Translate

@JST is right, drawing in-context helps you precisely position bodies. This said, 3D snapping is something that is quite high on our prio list currently.

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@osunick
There is a good selection of methods offered above, please will you share with us the one you found most useful? Or perhaps you found an alternative?
Doing so may help the Community. Thank you.

This is a feature I really really miss. Select two faces of any objects and make them stick. This would make my drawings sooooo much faster. No more translations, trying to find the right spot and the right angle.
Also the solution suggested above doesnā€™t work in the case you donā€™t know the axes to use for the rotation. So at the moment, correct me if Iā€™m wrong, there is no way to get two solids parallel except by remaking themā€¦ :man_facepalming::man_facepalming::man_facepalming:

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I donā€™t know why 3D snaps have not been implemented yet. Iā€™ve discussed them with Istvan at least 2 years ago, and they said it were on their todo list. I dont use Shapr continuously, but every time this is one of the most annoying deficit. I often have the need to move several objects around, and rearrange them until I find the best placement, and there is no easy way to work it out.

This is the ONE thing I really wantā€¦other than aligning objects, I find Shapr3d to be incredibly intuitive and easy to use!

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indeed; I have a very simple shape that is just off of (0,0,0) ā€“ try as I mgiht I canā€™t figure out how in the world to move the object just a skotch over so itā€™s not triggering my perfectionist ā€œbut itā€™s not on the origin!ā€ peculiarities. :slight_smile: I can double-tap the sketch and the center is there, but it wants to snap to the grid, and Iā€™m not on grid, so snapping doesnā€™t do it, and I canā€™t move the center point to the bottom-left corner vertex.

@andrew
If it is a ā€˜simple shapeā€™ perhaps it is worth considering starting afresh On Origin?

It is a simple matter of Angling and or Rotating the Sketch(es) to the desired position afterwards.
If there is a possibility that the process will be repeated later either:

  1. Remember the essential details of the positioning.

  2. Duplicate and name the File before positioning, keeping the Original File On Origin.

If you must work with the current File:

a. Deselect Snaps, Magnet Icon bottom right while Main and Sub Menu(s) are displaying

b. Zoom in close given the small movement needed

In the following note the Snaps Settings:

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Hi, Iā€™ve found a workaround for this, in 2d , donā€™t know about 3dā€¦ what I do is zoom right in between both lines, draw a line connecting them (this should snap to both lines), then the dimension of this line is the amount I need to move byā€¦
I delete the line, zoom back out, and type this dimension for the translation arrow, with plus or minus value depending which direction I need to travel. Itā€™s not fast, but seems to be fully accurate, Hope this helps.

Hm, this doesnā€™t work for me. If I start on a gridline then the line keeps snapping to grid lines, and wonā€™t snap to the shape (Iā€™m working in the sketch). If I start on the shape then it wonā€™t snap to grid lines.

That was a fantastic idea, but it doesnā€™t seem to work for me.

Oh, shame, I wonder if weā€™re talking about the same thingā€¦? I double checked after to be sure I wasnā€™t giving wrong information, And it worked, and I checked after by zooming back in again.
I posted a screenshot in another thread this morning, itā€™s two pickup routes plus a neck route for an electric guitar, and it was the neck rout to the nearest pickup rout I had to join, as they wouldnā€™t snap together, maybe you could post a screenshot of your situation? I am very new to this however, what Iā€™ve shared totals all of my knowledge in Shapr3D!

We work with a lot of square steel tubes and round pipes that have no defined sharp edge (steel tubes have mitered edges) so getting them aligned is a real pane because there are not definite edges or vertices to translate from and too. Its easy to translate sharp edges and corners because of a definite reference point, but Iā€™m wasting a ton of time trying to simply align two pipes or a pipe and tube.

It seems like there should be a very simple way of constraining two or more bodies to an alignment say centered or perpendicular or parallel. Is there a simple way to do this? Also if we had 2D and 3D centers or projected edge locations of objects (say for instance you have a circle and visual center point and tangent line vertices were also shown as reference points for translation) that we could use as logical reference points to work from that would at least make translations a lot simpler on non square objects.

Also, what about a way to constrain a translation to a 2D move only? this would be really helpful when moving two groups of objects that simply need to line up with each other in one dimension.

Anyone have a simple solution?

I really like Shapr3d as a tool, but some of the most simple tools like align and distribution are missing and they are huge time wastes which drive us back to using F360

Iā€™ve been placing a line in the center where I create a circle or square. The tubes are created from that point. I then connect, and move the pipes, and connect their center end points.

A long time ago in another CAD program, I was working with lots of tubes - both, round, rectangular and square. My first inclination was to work off of a centering line. But I soon realized that this doesnā€™t work well for different sized tubes. Better to work with the outline shape as in many cases the center lines/points wonā€™t be aligned/converge. Havenā€™t tried in S3D but it seems to me that you could work in 3D and let Shapr do the mitering/joining, etc. If I have some time I will try an example ā€” say a small diameter round tube into an angled rectangular tube.

Best,

Tom

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My original thought was to use square tubes with not miter and then use the edges as the reference, but I ran into the issue that mitering after the fact was just too time consuming and also that tubes are typically connected on center when you different sized tubes intersecting.

McD is correct most tubes are all centered on each other (think about a manifold where 50mm pipes enter into a 100mm pipe) they are all connected on the center line. Iā€™m going to try McDā€™s suggestion. In addition, this is what we use to create the pipe which is the Sweep function and it requires the center line for a circular pipe.

On challenge I have is that you need to double click on the small ā€œsideā€ wall of a pipe to extrude it or change its length. is there a way to set an existing 3D pipe shape to a specific length by just typing in the measurements and changing the entire length of the body to a specific length and not changing its length a relative amount?