Rotating in Free Space
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I'm designing a glass prism in Sketchup. To check my plan, I'm flattening the surfaces out into a plane, then printing, cutting, and gluing into a 3-D model.
It's easy to rotate the first few planes, which are aligned with the x-y-z axes. Later on, faces are irregular, angles are not square, and no lines align with the axes. The rotate tool will align with an axial plane, or a face, but then it distorts the sides instead of flattening them.
I need to align the rotate tool square to the line I'm hinging on, but can't find an easy way, without elaborage constructions of perpendicular planes. It seems this must be simpler— any tips?
Tanks,
Jim
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You can click and drag with the rotate tool to create a hinge line for rotation. That might be the best answer, though I have to be honest I'm not quite following the exact steps you're going through in modeling this piece. But if you just need to set up a hinge line, click and drag your first click with the rotate tool.
You can also set up temporary geometry or construction lines to help setup your hinge line first if needed. Have fun,
Chris
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Nothing like trying to describe actions performed to a 3-D model to illustrate the limits of language.
Click and dgar— wow, what a comcept. In less time than it takes to figure how to construct perpendicular planes, I've finished flattening the model.
Thanks, Chris!
— to those still trying to figure what I meant, here's another stab at it:
To model this prism and check it out in the real world, I made a flat map of the skin of it. I was Move>Copying individual faces, aligning them and Rotating them into a plane. My issue was, how do I define the hinge line of the Rotate tool when none of the default orientations works.By placing the Rotate compass on an endpoint and click-dragging it along the line I want for a hinge, the compass snaps into the right orientation. From there it's a snap.
This is my first question. Glad there's a newbie forum.
Best,
Jim -
Ahhh, excellent. Glad I could be of help. That click and drag on the rotate tool was something I learned a good 2 years after I had been using SU. Maybe longer. Its so obvious, and yet not......
Chris
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This is a rather poorly documented feature in SU. The only "hint" about it is when the SU Guide is explaining the autofold feature at about the middle of this page.
Here is a nifty gif animation by Taff Goch to give ideas:
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@gaieus said:
Here is a nifty gif animation...
For readers whose browser won't show the animation above, this url should work:
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Thanks Taff (I'm actually surprised because first it showed to me but now I cannot see it myself).
I hope you don't mind me inserting it here!
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@gaieus said:
I hope you don't mind me inserting it here!
No, indeed, Gai -- You're the one who encouraged me to add it to the advanced tips write-up, in the first place.
As far as the 'animated gif' loading properly -- Apparently, you have to copy the entire Google Group shortcut for the image file. Sometimes the short version works for me, sometimes not. The long version always seems to work, though.
Taff
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Thanks.
Yes,I have also realised that there are two versions so that's why I double checked after posting. Well, anyways...
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