Centre between two points

SketchUp Feature Requests
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1

There may be a fast way of doing this but I haven’t found it.

I often want to use an imaginary point half way between two others (to rotate, mirror, copy, etc). My workaround is to draw a line between the points, use the centrepoint, then delete the line. Admittedly, that doesn’t take long but it would be much faster to have the facility inbuilt or an extension that was dedicated to the task.

I appreciate this is mainly used in 2D drafting but if you consider any plane, horizontal or vertical, to be a 2D surface within a 3D drawing, the need is still frequently there.

If anyone has an elegant way to do this at present, better than my workaround, it would be great to hear about it. In AC, I had a keyboard shortcut that did this.

2

Yea - model in 3D rather than draft in 2D.
A line represents an edge, and seldom are edges at the midpoint between two others - normally the midpoint of an object lies on the midpoint between two places, and the solution of drawing a line and using it’s midpoint still has the problem that it’s not where you want to start drawing (I would love if the rectangle tool could be started at a mid-point rather than a corner)

If you don’t want to draw the line, then the solution I use is based around the array tool: pressing /2 to get a duplicate of geometry in the mid point: either…

  • draw a ‘tic’ line at point 1
  • move it with [ctrl] to position a copy at point 2
  • type “/2” [return] to position another tic at midpoint
  • select the tics and move out of the way of the rest of the model
  • move the desired thing to line up with point 1
  • select it and use the move tool
  • use the tics as snap points for a relative distance “from” and “to” rather than using a point on the thing to snap to
  • delete the tics

OR

  • move the desired thing to line up with point 1
  • move it with [ctrl] to position a copy at point 2
  • type “/2” [return] to position a copy at the mid-point
  • delete thing 1 and thing 2
3

have you had a look at TIG’s centerpointAll plugin?

or even his 2d toolset may help in your workflow…

john

1 Like
4

I often use a small free plugin from Smustard called Midpoint, which does exactly what you describe: it places a construction point halfway between two selected points.

http://www.smustard.com/script/Midpoint

-Gully

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5

Gully, many, many thanks. That does exactly what I want and it’s nice and simple.