I need some help with rotating an object’s axis. In the picture below, I have an object at the center and three directional lines ending at the same end point in space. How do I rotate the cylindrical object’s axis at the center (object with blue line at center) so that the center object’s axis will align with the directional lines? This is similar to demonstrating the travel paths of bullets firing from a particular point in space hitting the objects at the ending locations (fictional as is not real!). I need help with fixing one end of the center cylindrical object and rotate in 3-D in space to align the travel paths. Please notice that the surface of the center cylindrical object must always be perpendicular to the travel axis (I am not able to demonstrated in the attached picture). Thank you in advance for any tips that you can offer.
Wow…nice. Thank you very much and here I am trying to stay awake since 3:30AM working on my Sketchup models…BTW, how did you do the GIF file in Sketchup. Is there a plug-in for it? Thanks again.
In cases like this you can also apply the ‘Axes’ tool and combine that to ‘Copy’ (to clipboard) and ‘Paste’.
With the ‘Axes’ tool align the red axis (or any of the three for that matter) to your blue line.
Now select the cylindrical object (group or component) and copy it to clipboard (see standard icons)
With the ‘Axes’ tool align the same (in my example red) axis to the new desired direction line.
Now paste (from clipboard) the content to your modeling space. The direction will be right.
Next move it into position.
A plugin solution if you have that capability is to use something like Eneroth’ s pipe along path.
by adding a short line to your existing lines ( click on end of your path and use inference to trace back a shorter line on end of same path - it will turn magenta) then select that smaller end line and click pipe tool.
