Select → Q (Rotate) → Inference ( → Arrow) → Move Cursor in direction → input 90, Enter. You’d be trying to inference off the Bounding Box, not the curved surface.
Select → Q (Rotate) → Inference ( Up Arrow) → Move Cursor in direction → CTRL to COPY → input 45, Enter. Line it up. I just used Move and figured I’d hit the correct spot on the top of the other piece. But you could find the center, as above. Otherwise, Snaps can be rotated too.
If you do what Dave showed, you could use Rotate from the intersection of the Guides/Lines and Copy an Array x7.
User error. I put the origin of the elbow at the origin of the model, and then put a plane through it, just to be sure I was getting the right points on the circle. Drew some lines, and it was exactly 45º.
Did an array of 45º x 7, and now it’s perfect.
I must have botched a control point in my original drawing.
Blasted botched control points 'll getcha every time.
Not necessarily. You just have to learn how to do it. But on the other hand, you can move ‘stuff’ around with VR headsets and controllers. You can make an app with Unity (Unity3D) that does these things. That’d be a lot of work just to align a couple of pipes ;^)!
Well, here it is. I still have some alignment issues, which I “fixed” by rotating the pipes a few degrees. Then again in real PVC land I had the exact same issues, which I fixed by rotating, bending, and coercing the pipes into sockets, so it’s just like real life!
It’s good enough for my purposes, which was to measure the diagonals on the “hat” part. None of the dimensions needs to be more accurate than an inch or two.
That’s the deluxe version. The version I actually built has the full octagon rings, but only 4 of the ribs and diagonals, and then bird netting all around. We’ll see if I get any nectarines this year.
The ribs and long diagonals are friction-fit, so I can break it all down for storage in the winter. Everything else is glued.
This concludes a long and ugly project that started with me trying to bend 5’ sections between the crosses into a true circle. TL;DR: don’t do that.
