Alignment

[enrique]

hello
im an artist from the uk and have been using sketchup for a short while
i am wondering if anyone has any ideas on alignment and how to align
objects ?
also on the user cordinate system and how it relates to the world coordinates
and can i revert to a ucs or the wcs or toggle them ?
asta luego

[Gaieus]

Hi Enrique and welcome to the forums!

Have a look at this brief tutorial by Alan about basic alignment:
http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5692&p=32649

Now as for the co-ordinate system in SU - it is an orthogonal projection so in a wide scope it will be distorted in the world co-ordinate system. There are however applications (those GIS and some Mapinfo apps) that seem to be able to go between the two but I don't know too much about them really.

As my country is relatively small, we get along with a certain orthogonal projection that we can then quite easily convert to the wcs.

Note that SU is meant to be an architectural visualization tool originally and even landscape architecture is pushing its limits. It is not a cartographical application with easy switches between rectangular co-ordinates (which it is using) and wcs. This even causes glitches with the Google Earth integration of it

[enrique]

hello
a bit late in the day to reply ...but thanks anyhow i am getting up to speed with scetchup, it is a bit freaky coming from an autocad background to see an application that is so easy to manipulate ..i have also invested in a space navigator from 3d connexion i would urge everyone to invest in one of these marvelous devices
http://www.3dconnexion.com/
no need for the fancy model they do a cheap navigator for around fifty uk pound

thanks for the reply

[Wo3Dan]

@enrique said:

........also on the user cordinate system and how it relates to the world coordinates and can i revert to a ucs or the wcs or toggle them ?....

Enrique,

Say you save the default SU axes setup in Scene1
You can now translate and/or rotate the axes as an orthogonal set to a new origin/direction.
Save this in Scene2

You will now be able to toggle between the two systems.
Also moving objects absolutely by using [x,y,z] is related to the current UCS, not to the WCS where SU starts from. Unless it is the current one.

So moving a selection by clicking on a point A to start from to [3m,5m,7m] will place point A (taking the selection with it) in x=3m,y=5m,z=7m of any rotated/translated current orthogonal system.

The same applies to relative movements: <2m,7m,3.25m>
A2 is relative to A1 by x=2m,y=7m,z=3.25m measured along the current axes
It works in SU7 and SU6.

Wo3Dan