Hy everyone,
I’m struggling with my groups as I am designing a structure. My wooden beams and their joinction pieces needs to be aligned and their bases coplanar. Same, my anchor plates needs to be coplanar with the ground floor.
Is there a manipulation or a tool that I can use instead of drawing triangles between my two objects to rotate following their plan?
Thanks in advance!
Are you using SketchUp Free for Web to do this modeling as your profile indicates? If so you can use the Rotate tool to rotate the anchor into position. You could add a guideline or a temporary line parallel to the ground at the center of rotation help guide you.
As for the other part, I’d have just modeled the two parts in place so as not to need to screw around but you should be able to move and rotate one part relative to the other.
If you share the SketchUp file it’ll be easier to give you mode specifics.
I corrected the info, I’m using SKP Pro 2021.
I get it for the anchor.
However the model for the other part needed to be twisted for designing the module with the junction pieces.
Here is the file:
2021-12-01 - VTN ESQUISSE.skp (2.1 MB)
Then when adding the pivot junction to beams all over the structure I couldn’t garantee their base to be coplanar with the base of the beam.
When I see this kind of thing, I am reminded of the old joke about an Irishman giving directions to a visitor: “if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.” I think that is what @DaveR meant. Now you have uploaded the file, he will no doubt demonstrate how to put things right.
I sketch a lot of piping, so when I saw this post it made me think what I would do if I had two skewed pipes that needed to be aligned and joined perfectly together end-to-end. So, I came up with this - set red arm of the MODEL axes parallel with pipe A; turn pipe-B into a component whose axes origin is set at the center of one end, with the red arm sharing the pipe’s centerline; drag this component out of the component inspector panel and attach it to pipe-A; reset MODEL axis.
Thanks for those many answers.
Duly noted about groups/components, axis, purges and materials. Truly I’ve been working on this model with other people and I would agree it’s messy. Your explanations about the cleanness of the model make lot of sense and I’ll forward them.
Back to the coplanar question:
First you might want to know I’m looking at the problem backward, after me manage to build and install the structure.
It need to be understood that for the matter of rationalizing the construction first we designed a limited amont of metal junctions and then we moved and rotated them around in space to design the structure itself.
Last we added the mounting bracket at the end of the wooden beams.
Then doesn’t it seems a logical question to ask our self: how to make the bases of two cylinders coplanar in space?
Use the fact that circles in SketchUp are made up of segments.
Aligning two cylinders
@mohai.s That would be a perfect tool to solve that question. What is that tool or plugin “Align Objects” that you propose to use?
Is this project strictly art, or does it also provide some other function - such as a vehicle barricade or a bike lock?
If the photo is showing an end result, i would guess it is a playground of some kind 
@AnnoNiem @pipingguy
It’s kind of both! It’s an artistic response to a technical need: how to not install some other concrete cubes on the sidewalk, prevent the car to park there and have this entrance of collective building somehow appeased.
@RLGL does it really respond to coplanar issues once you designed joint metal pieces and move them with beams around space?
It is a free extension , download it and see if it works for yoou. It is worth the learning experience.
