I have a solid that is multi-faceted. I want to find the center that Sketchup determines to be the center when you select the scale tool. Is there anyway to do that?
TIG has an extension called Center Point All. Or you could use his Center of Gravity extension if that’s what you are really interested in.
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The scale tool uses the center of the object’s bounding box, which depending on the shape may be quite different from what one would consider to the the “center” of the object. The GUI doesn’t provide any way to pick the bb center. As @DaveR suggested, that will require an extension.
Has anyone ever made an extension that would construct as actual geometry a box that corresponds to the bounding box of a group, component or selection? Would that be hard? It would be useful to create low poly proxies of high poly objects as well as give you snapping points to work with.
Thom Thom’s Draw Bounding Box. I use it frequently. It’ll draw geometry or place guide points at the corners.
Excellent! Just the thing.
Solid.skp (216.3 KB)
Less important it is about this object but more important is how Sketchup works. I have attached a model of a solid that I was trying to find the center that Sketchup creates when it does it’s bounding box in the Scale tool. In this model you see the Center of Gravity location and I have drawn a line at the Center of Object created by the extension you suggested. Neither one of the them is the center that Sketchup creates with Scale tool. I just find it interesting that Sketchup creates something and no one has seemed to capitalize on finding that information and making it available.
The center identified by the Scale tool and TIG’s Center Point All is the center of the bounding box. The Center of Gravity extension locates the center of gravity based on the geometry, not the bounding box. Two different things.
I know they are different. I even used Thom’s Bounding box and it gave me the same as the Center of Object which still isn’t the same as what Sketchup finds. I find it all interesting and a little annoying frankly. It just seems geometry and math would work so that they are all the same - (not the gravity - that is different- I know)
I don’t understand what the problem is or what it is you’re trying to achieve. Maybe someone else can figure it out for you.
Dave - I appreciate the responses. The answers here helped me enough to do what I wanted. Thanks.
The bounding box is nothing else than the box that you’ll need to put your selection in so everything neatly fits.
If you rotate the drawing axes SketchUp needs another size box to fit all in.
Also, if you add text you may be surprised of the size of the box that needs to have the text included.
The box is along the current drawing axes or if the selection is just one group or one component, the box is along their local axes, again as small as possible to fit everything in.