Why can’t I draw a circle at a specific center location? The tutorials say to “type the absolute coordinates in the Measurements box”… but that function doesn’t seem to be available. The measurement box is defaulting to the number of “Sides”, not the location. Can I turn off this “Sides” setting and have it just use the default?
Which tutorial says to do that? could you provide a link?
Drawing a circle
To draw a circle, follow these steps:
Select the Circle tool ().
Click to place the circle’s center point. Or type absolute coordinates in the Measurements box and press Enter (Microsoft Windows) or Return (Mac OS X).
To define the circle’s radius, move the cursor away from the center point and click to set the circle’s size. Or type a radius or diameter value in a unit of measure. For example, for a 5-inch radius, type 5“. For a 5-inch diameter, type 5” d. (If you don’t specify a unit of measure, LayOut uses the default units, which you can set by selecting File > Document Setup and then opening the Units pane.) Then press Enter or Return.
If you read the top of that page and even in your quoted text, it indicates the topic is for LayOut, not SketchUp.
This is not a bug in SketchUp so I’m editing the title.
In SketchUp you can move existing entities to specific locations.
You can’t start drawing at any desired locations unless there is some reference point right there, like an endpoint, midpoint, edge, face, guide, intersection etc.
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Yeah, that was my backup plan. I guess I’ll be using a lot of “construction lines”.
Thanks.
If you draw a circle at a wrong location, you can move it to the desired one using the move tool: click the circle center, wiggle the mouse to start the move, and then type the absolute coordinates where you want the center to go [x,y,z] (with actual values, of course, and use ‘;’ instead of ','as separator if your locale uses ‘,’ as the decimal point). No construction lines needed, though naturally they would let you put the center at the desired point in the first place.
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That doesn’t seem to work. It seems to want “Distance” not absolute coordinates.
Just type the absolute coordinates when it says “distance”. It will work!
Did you enter the coordinates as Steve showed with square brackets?
No brackets.
Use the brackets, Chuck.
Got it.
Thanks Again.
If your keyboard needs to use the AltGr key when typing a bracket, typing absolute coordinates in the control box won’t work.
Anssi
Ok, but what do I do when I have to use the AltGr?
I need to position a circle precisly
-Didi
Old post. It works in SketchUp 2019. SketchUp even helpfully, on pressing the left bracket key, puts a pair of them in your VCB and puts your cursor between them. Depending on your regional settings, you need to use either a comma or a semicolon as the delimiter between the x,y,z coordinates.
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