Win 10…HP…SU 17 Make.
With the circle cmnd opening Flat-blue axis, needs to be Vert-blue.
How to achieve this ?
Poke the appropriate cursor key. Try it yourself to see what happens.
I did tthat …
And?
If you didn’t get the result you were looking for, you need to be more specific about what you want. We’ve been through this before. Write a real description of what you want. Include a screen shot.
edit-circle axis.skp (72.0 KB)
To stand that circle upright in your file just use the rotate tool, click the centre and drag along the green axis before releasing the mouse button to orient the axis of the tool, then select reference point to rotate, then rotate to desired point. In this case using the blue axis to inference to (snap).
Although it would make more sense to draw the circle in the correct orientation in the first place. So as DaveR says, select the circle tool (do not click yet) then press LEFT/UP/RIGHT cursor keys to orient the circle. When happy with the orientation then click to place the centre and make the radius you want.
3 Likes
It’s amazing the things you learn by hanging out in this place. Awhile ago, Sketchup enhanced the inferences with regards to drawing arcs and circles, and for rotating geometry. I hate to be a gripe, but it wasn’t necessarily an improvement. Too often the inference snapped to a place out of view, and it became tedious if not impossible to finish the operation. Now I’ve used Sketchup since Version 3, and I NEVER saw this cool way of orienting the reference plane. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there…I just never saw it. That could be because Sketchup, after one of the shortest learning curves in the world of 3D software made creating stuff so much more easy than any of the other software I’ve used (including AutoCAD, Revit, 3DStudio, FormZ, and a few others too horrible to mention).
Thanks Thorleyian. You just made my day.
Yes! I keep finding holes in my knowledge too. The click-and-drag to draw the axis trick has probably become my most common technique with the circle tool once I found out about it.
thank you for the comprehensive ‘how-to’.
Now, practice!
You REFER to a technique I would like to learn. Could you HELP ?
I think the animated GIF above shows it in action at one point. When you pick the rotate too, it looks for you to place the protractor somewhere in your model. If you just click on a spot, it will place it there with the orientation it’s showing at the time. If, however, you click and drag, it will draw a line (like the pencil does) that defines the axis of rotation. You can either snap that line to some existing geometry or to one of the axes.
Someone could ask @Box for removing me from his ignore list? 
I really love his work and contribution. 
I’ll try.
@Box, are you willing to remove @spawn from your “ignore” list ?
(that is if it ever existed)
@spawn, I did my best.
3 Likes
Nice, try to make a little video
I’ve look this post for second time and I realized that @Box rotated the faces without using any of the axes as references.
I didn’t know that was possible, I’m afraid I lost some tutorial 
But thanks the .gif now I know how to do it.
In a word, No.
Switching to the FONT View … does it ‘easy’.
Switching to the FONT View … does it ‘easy’.
Switching to the FONT View … does it ‘easy’.