I’m confused by why I can no longer do locked vertical moves when I change the face a component is supposed to “glue to”. It’s best to explain using a screen recording. I’m also attaching the .skp file
I first make a copy of the component, name it and set the glue surface as “any”
I then change the axis for that component, on the face where I want to glue it
Then I drag out a new instance of the component and it glues as desired to a horizontal face
But then when I try to move the component vertically it will not “lock” on blue axis – even when I hit the up arrow key or use the shift key
Finally, I remove the “any” glue surface, drag out a new instance, and it moves vertically
Gluing to a surface is great, but not being able to move in a controlled way above or below that surface seems wrong. Am I missing something?
Because I only want the “orientation” aspect of “glue to” so that I can get that angled surface of the chair leg parallel to the floor (but possibly offset from it).
My goal was to use that same chair leg spindle as a table leg, but to do so I wanted to widen the spindle by 2x along it’s axis and by about 1.5x along its length. That sort of rescaling works when the component axis is the same as the global axis, but of course it’s better to have the axis at an angle when setting the leg on a surface. So as I was doing the above axis changes and scaling, I found at times that I needed to move vertically and was surprised that I could not.
This is just one example. I’m sure there are many cases when an object needs to be oriented as if it’s glued to a surface but then offset some distance from that surface.
I’m not sure how it would work from a use ability sense…
I’ve been designing complex timber structures for 20+ years in SKP and I never use the ‘glue’ capabilities of components (even my windows and doors can be positioned wherever I need them). All of my timber components are built like your first example - the bounding box and axis follows the edges of the timber - and I move / rotate / skew them as needed.
It might help to create a ‘guide’ component that is just a wireframe of your geometry - you can hide or delete the surfaces and then lock this component. It makes lining up skewed legs, posts, hips, valleys, etc. much easier - you can let the geometry do the work, inferencing and snapping to points as you position your pieces.
I was just using this angled piece of woodwork as an example. My question is more general, relating to placing angled surfaces parallel to other surfaces.
I have a workaround: to make glued components move/offset vertically, I can first use “glue to” then uncheck the “glue to” feature. It just seems unnecessarily restrictive to completely lose the ability to move along one dimension. I figured maybe there’s a better way to do it than my workaround, or perhaps that I wasn’t even using the whole feature correctly.
You don’t need to set the gluing properties for a component to sit on a face. Gluing makes the component stick to the object so if you move that object it will go with it.
Simply aligning the component axis correctly will allow you to place things accurately without gluing.
If the object you wish to place it on is rotated open the group for editing and it will follow the group axis.
This is exactly what I needed. I had seen the “glue to” feature of components used to make surfaces stick to each other in any orientation, so I thought that was the tool for aligning surfaces. What I was missing was that the axis tool and components work together to do what I want:
the axis tool must first be used to define the alignment and
components (without “glue to” activated) can then be used to place them flush.
At that point I use the move tool as usual to offset as needed. At first I thought the axis tool was doing most of the work so maybe I didn’t need components. But when I tried doing all this with groups I realized that even without “glue to” activated components are the key to placing pieces flush to angled surfaces without all sorts of rotating.
People often miss the value of setting the component axes. By default they will be the bottom left of the bounding box, and this becomes the insertion point of the component.
With a box that can be all you need or want, but for something like a screw that is far from helpful, by setting at the point of the screw as the axes allows you to easily place them at the centre of a hole.
Box’s suggestion for the screw is great, and I do this a lot for bolts and hardware. Note that the axis follows the general logic of the material being modeled, but it is placed at a convenient location for aligning / inference.
For timber / wood / etc though I always try to keep the axis aligned with the length of the timber - in a production environment it makes it easier to stretch tricky joinery / geometry knowing that an end will move along an axis all the same, all the time.
For one offs, and using Web version (non commercial) feel free to do what works… but for me, best practice is the axis follows the logic of the material I’m modeling with. Timbers, table legs, treads, studs, etc - even if they are skewed and rotated and tipped in space they all have the same logic.
