Hi everyone,
This seems like a pretty basic problem, but I can’t find anything that references how to automatically draw a line on the “pink” axis…meaning the 45 degree angle between the green and blue axis. I know you can hold down the right arrow to lock onto the red axis when drawing a line, and then the left arrow for the green axis. Is there a keystroke to lock onto that pink 45 degree axis?
Thanks for any help.
The “pink” axis as you call it isn’t an axis. The magenta inference lines indicate parallel or perpendicular to an existing, usually off-axis edge or guideline.
You can draw an edge and rotate it to 45° or you can draw an edge in the green direction and then draw another one from the end of the first in the blue direction making it the same length as the first. Then complete the triangle. The last edge will be at 45° to both the green and blue axes. There are other ways such as drawing the diagonal of a square or moving the end of an edge to get the edge to the 45° angle.
Thank you Dave. So just to clarify, there isn’t a keystroke to lock onto that 45 degree angle. It’s just frustrating because sometimes my drawing line locks onto the magenta and sometimes it disappears. I can always use the workarounds like you suggested. Again thank you
No. There isn’t a keystroke for that.
I think it just requires getting used to the inferencing system. That takes practice.
They aren’t really work arounds. Remember you’re working in a 2D representation of a
3D space. There are sixteen 45° directions from the origin. You have to do something to tell SketchUp which direction you’re intending.
As Dave has stated, the magenta inference is showing directions which are parallel or perpendicular to an edge you hover over. Press down on the keyboard to lock the magenta directions. You can also hold shift when you find the magenta direction along with the red, blue and green ones. You may already know that.
I know this doesn’t help with the 45° problem, but I didn’t know anything about the magenta directions until I went to learn.sketchup.com
Took me almost a year to discover this feature… frantically moving my mouse searching for that “pink” line. (I called it pink too, still do sometimes.)
Blessings in your journey!
Holding shift once I’m able to lock onto the magenta direction works perfectly as a solution. Much appreciated!!
Can you share a screen-shot of what you were trying to do?
Make sure you are understanding what you are locking with Shift, it certainly isn’t 45deg.
Sure, here you go. Like Box says below, it’s not always necessarily locking onto the 45 degree angle. This screenshot show that the magenta line is perpendicular to the face I’m drawing from. I pressed shift once I found the magenta locking point. Sorry if my terminology is bad…I’m not great at explaining my process.
As far as I know, it never does 45. It will only lock parallel and perpendicular to the line you hover over.
You’ll have to sign in to watch that, but it’s where I first learned about the depths of inference locking. The whole coarse was a blessing.
If you start to bevel an 90 degrees angle of a face, it will ‘snap’ to 45.
can you post a gif or a link so I can see how that is demonstrated?
Usually I would just use the protractor tool.
It’s not that hard, draw a rectangle, focus on a corner, activate the line tool, click once on an edge to start, move along the other to see.
Thanks! I like knowing how to do things in different ways. It seems like it would end up taking the same amount of time for me, as long as I had set up the rectangle in such a way as to put the starting point exactly where I want it.
Edit
I thought it would do a 45 from anywhere on the rectangle, but it will just snap to the corner it seems.
Have you found the videos on this SketchUp YouTube page?
No, I had not!
