Tangent / Component Move Tool (Legacy Alias Maya Workflow)

Workshop Feature requests
1

First of all, thank you to the team for building such a fluid and intuitive design experience in Shapr3D.

I would like to request a permanent “Lock Tangent/Edge Axis” toggle for the Transform Gizmo. This core concept was originally popularized decades ago by Alias|Wavefront in Maya as the Tangent Tool, which Autodesk later evolved into Transform Constraints and Custom Axis Orientation tools. It has remained an industry favorite for years because it makes manipulating angled geometry simple, predictable, and efficient.

Shapr3D already has an excellent implementation running under the hood. The tangent-axis move arrows appear automatically in certain situations and work beautifully when they do. I love the feature when it is available, but I would also like the ability to access it manually. Because it is currently automatic and context-sensitive, it can disappear as selections change, making it difficult to consistently use during more complex workflows.

Would it be possible to add a button to the adaptive menu, transform gizmo, or pivot controls that allows users to manually lock the move arrows to a selected edge or line tangent? This would give users direct access to a tool that already exists in Shapr3D and make it far more practical for tasks such as angled furniture framing, bracing, and other geometry that needs to move precisely along its own trajectory.

In many ways, Shapr3D has already solved the hard part—the functionality is there and works exceptionally well. This request is simply to give users direct control over when they want to invoke it, rather than relying solely on automatic detection.

Thank you for considering this feature request, and thank you again for continuing to improve an already outstanding piece of software.

Tangent move tool
Tangent move tool1536×1024 189 KB

Screenshot 2026-05-29 at 10.13.30 AM
Screenshot 2026-05-29 at 10.13.30 AM968×772 36 KB

2

What is the result you want to achieve? Move a body/face/edge along a body edge, and keep that reference alive if the reference edge changes later?

3

I’m not 100% sure I read OP’s request correctly, but If I do, it comes down to this:

Objects in Maya / Blender / 3D Studio and similar tools have “attached” orientations. So after for example rotating the object, you can then either move it along the global axises of the workspace, or move it along the objects local axises that have rotated along with the object.

I’ve sometimes missed this feature in Shapr too, where I’d want to move something along an axis that isn’t parallel to the workspace global axises.

In effect this means that not just the anchor point of the move gizmo can be moved, but that the movement directions of gizmo itself can be rotated. Being able to align the move gizmo with an edge or construction axis would be chef’s kiss.

4

To answer your question directly, the result I want to achieve is simple: automatic alignment of the move tool to a chosen geometric direction—whether that’s an edge, face, curve, or tangent—so geometry can be manipulated faster and more accurately.

As drkronos pointed out, Shapr3D can occasionally do something similar during certain rotation operations, but once that action ends, the gizmo returns to its normal orientation. While we can manually rotate the transform gizmo to approximate an object’s angle, a true tangent/edge move tool would make that alignment automatic, instantaneous, and precise.

This concept has been around for decades. Alias|Wavefront introduced it in Maya in the early 2000s, and it became popular because it dramatically streamlined geometric manipulation. By aligning the transform axes to the existing direction of the geometry, users can push, pull, and reposition faces, edges, curves, or entire bodies without constantly resetting the gizmo, creating construction geometry, or performing multi-axis adjustments.

A practical Shapr3D example would be an extruded boss or feature created at an odd angle. If I want to lengthen it or slide it along its current trajectory, I shouldn’t have to manually reorient the gizmo or create reference lines first. I should be able to select the geometry, have the transform axes automatically align to that edge or tangent direction, and move it immediately.

For me, this request is not about parametric history or maintaining references if the model changes later. It’s purely about speed, convenience, precision, and a more natural modeling workflow that follows the geometry already present in the design.

The feature already exists contextually in Shapr3D today; I’m simply asking for users to be able to invoke and lock that behavior intentionally when needed.

5