Sketchup Align Axis setup
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Hi,
Perhaps I'm crazy, but it seems to me that before when you aligned an axis to a face it would keep that alignment no matter what. But now I'm finding that if you are inside a component/group and you align an axis to a face in that component/group it only remain that way until you exit the component/group, at which time it reverts back the original location. Is there a way to set it up so that the axis remains in the same orientation wether or not you are inside or outside of the component/group? The reason being, I have a building that I am modelling in which each floor is a group. The building faces are not at 90deg to each other and when placing windows I need to re-align the axis within each floor each time I want to place windows correctly. Before I was able to set the alignment to a face, go into a group and add all the windows I needed and then re-align the axis for the next face of the building etc. And when it was all said and done I would just reset the axis back to the original location.
Is there a setting to change this? Or am I just dreaming?
Rob
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With the switch to version 8, when you open a component for editing, you are seeing the component's axes, not the global axes. I suspect this is what is confusing you. You shouldn't need to realign the global axes if the component axes are aligned with the component's geometry. This ought to save you a lot of work.
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Thank Dave, thats what I was thinking. I did find a work around, pretty simple really. Rather than using 'Align Axis' within the group, use 'place axis' to physically move the axis to the correct orientation. This will maintain that axis orientation no matter how many times you exit or enter the group.
Thanks again.
Rob
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Glad that helped Rob.
Keep in mind that a component's or group's axes are aligned with the global axes upon creation of the component or group. If this axis orientation doesn't align with the geometry of the component, as would be the case with, say a rafter drawn in place or a window drawn on an angled wall, Change Axes can be used to modify the axis orientation as well as change the location of the component's or group's origin and thus the insertion point. Of course this is useful if you want tools to align to the axes when editing. If you are using interested in generating some sort of report indicating the dimensions of the components or groups in your model, alignment of the axes with the geometry is critical. Those reports typically report the dimensions of the bounding boxes.
If the component will be used in the future, setting the orientation and location of the axes can greatly improve your workflow, too.
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