How to align components with a line not on an axis?
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Hi, I'm a newbie!
Hope you nice folks can help me get the most out of SketchUp. What an amazing tool.
I want to copy a road component down a line but it seems that the component snaps offline, resulting in a row of slightly skewed road sections.
Which is very irritating.
As is a host of other things I can't do yet but one thing at a time.
Thx
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Got an image/screen shot to show so I can get an idea of exactly what you need?
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Are you trying to copy and rotate your component?
I am going home so the following to rotate your component. If that's not what you are looking for, export, and post a 2D jpg of your screen so that Solo can help you. He's among the best. Btw, I am also a beginner, and this is the way I point light fixtures; don't know if there is a better way.
To rotate a component in 3 dimensions, draw a line from a point on the axis that will be the component's origin (for the rotation) to the target you wish to point the component's axis to. Then draw a line from that point to the other end of the component's axis. Join the ends into a triangle, creating a surface. Select the component, place the rotate tool on the triangles surface, move it to the start of the first line, and select that position. Select a spot on the third line, then select a point on the first line thereby rotating the component on its axis to point to the target. If necessary rotate the component around its axis to complete your alignment.
If anyone can improve on my method, please post.
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try the two align scripts by didier bur.
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Advice from another newbie, so be careful not to think this is the best way. But it might work. Let's see.
Draw a rectangle on the ground that's square to the current red and green axes. This rectangle will be for reference to return to the current axis alignment.
Now draw a rectangle on the ground that's square to the line which is your target. Right click on the "target rectangle" and select Align Axes.
This might make your move snap to the correct axis, or make moves to get it there easier. Playing around without seeing your situation, I see NO the copy does not snap to the new axis (probably a good thing now that I think about it). But if you go to plan or top view and use the rotate tool, you will see that now the protractor is ligned up with the target axes, making that spin easy to do. You will probably then only have the component parallel to the target line, so you'll probably need one more move to get it on top of your line.Then if you wish, you can right click on the first rectangle and align axes back to the original orientation.
That Align Axes feature was a big find for this newbie durring some earlier designs for a house that isn't build square to the property lines. I was struggling trying to make an addition square to the existing structure and my axes were instead square to the property line. so I faced a frustration similar to yours. It pays to play around with all the menus a little.
Anyway, HTH. A cool script would be better if you need to do this often, but for occasional use this might be OK.
-Dean
*still on the steep part of the learning curve myself.
*drawing my future home, but increasingly very distracted by this whole Green Toaster situation...
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@motogroove said:
...Draw a rectangle on the ground that's square to the current red and green axes. This rectangle will be for reference to return to the current axis alignment.
Now draw a rectangle on the ground that's square to the line which is your target. Right click on the "target rectangle" and select Align Axes...OR just right click on any of the (modified) axes and "Reset" (ehm... until I found out about this, I'd kept drawing reference boxes at the original world origin myself
).Anyway, Dean, cool tips. And a relatively newbie user can often "feel" the problems of other newbies better.
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Many thanks for all your suggestions, the more I use SU it seems as if jiggling is a key feature of using it
When I run into seemingly insurmountable problems it does take some of the fun out of it so some ocassional assistance is crucial to my SU development. Many thanks.I got it sorted in the end by adjusting where I placed the rotation axis and then moving it into place.
when I find the way to edit or cut sections off an imported model I will be one step further. - 'edit' Got it! right click on the selection and edit component. Now we're cooking with gas..
Such is life.
Thanks for your help
teepee
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