Rotating very small angles
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I need to rotate a very long solid group over 0.1 degrees
But is seems as if Sketchup is not able to do that
I probably would need to rotate the area first and than push/pull out?
Thanks -
Do you need to rotate it or sweep through an arc of 0.1 degrees with Follow Me? It's confusing because those are two different things.
If it is the Follow Me, thing, you should be able to do that with the correct set up but because it is a small angle, you'll need to use a large-radius arc to have anything to use as a path.
Try drawing the arc first in an empty drawing. It might look like nothing has been drawn but use Zoom Extents to find it. If you draw an arc with a radius of 10m the arc length will be less than 18mm
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Is this a Rotate tool issue ?
Your Preferences > Units, Angle snap settings should be 'maximized'.
Is this Rotation angle around a vertical axis ?
If you draw two guidelines with the tapemeasure tool and use those to snap the start/end points in the Rotate Tool does that help ?
SketchUp has a built-in tolerance and very tiny / enormous objects can cause issues.
Its 1/1000" tolerance can mean it assumes that two points which are closer than that are coincident, so it does nothing - usually seen in not making some tiny edges/facets...
It might also cause issues if the points you pick for the Rotation are very close.
It you make a guideline for the final alignment, and Rotate the object well out of the way, by several degrees, then re-Rotate it from its new position to snap the guideline does that help to align it correctly ??
If it's a FollowMe issue we need more info... -
I also think on many templates the default is to snap angles at 15deg. Change this in model info units.
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Rotate at an angle then type the right angle in VCB +enter
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Thanks All,
Its just the rotate tool As "the TIG" indicated it was indeed the settings in the units, I could not find it at first as it was under Modelinfo > Units but here I could unable "angle snapping" and then it worked perfectly (also precision up to 0.000 so more then enough for me)Another thing I wanted to ask, pretty sure you guys have a trick or plugin. I am having a lot of trouble with finding my way around in 3d space. In acad there are loads of snap settings, a grid and co-ordinate system but in Sketchup its more difficult.
For example, I want to rotate something in the x-plane. If there are no objects with a face in this plane my rotate tool does not find it. In that case I now draw a rectangle in this plane so the tool can snap to it, hold down shift and go to my object, but there must be a quicker way ?
Same for starting a line... for example somewhere on the z-axis, Now I first draw a line from the origin up to my start point on the z-axis to start my line, it all seems a lot of actions but I am probably doing it the wrong way. What I find very annoying is that although Sketchup allows you to put in (relative) coordinates it does not work with a starting point of a line.
Anyway that's already three questions better stop now
I think Sketchup is fantastic, its just a learning curve I need to go through I think
I hope
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With some practice you'll find you don't need grids and such to work in the 3D space. Paying attention to the color of lines trailing the cursor when drawing or moving entities will give you cues. There's all sorts of inferencing indications to let you know where you are in relation to other things. As for the Rotate tool, the color of the protractor tells you its orientation. If you're having difficulty getting it to the orientation you want, orbit the camera and change the view a bit. Once you get it oriented as you want, hold Shift to lock the direction. There are other tricks. For example, if you have a line representing the axis of rotation, click and drag along the line and the you'll see the protractor snaps to the proper orientation. Then you can proceed with the rotation.
I mentioned orbiting the camera to change the view a bit. You're not doing a painting here. You're doing sculpture. To that end, you've got to move around so you can see the model. Get very familiar with using the center mouse button to zoom, orbit and pan. Practice until you can do those things almost without thinking about it. One day you'll find you just tried to orbit while looking at a photograph. Then you'll know you've got it.
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I might also suggest that if the geometry you are working with doesn't work well with the orientation of the axes, just change the axes so they do. Context click on the axes, select "place" or "change axes" then put it where you want them. You would usually want to use the geometry you are working with as the inference point for placing the new axes.
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