I am using SketchUp 2021 and am encountering something I’ve never experienced before.
I moved the axis in my model to a new location and, when selecting one of the standard views, the axes are rotated a few degrees. You can see the behavior in the GIF below.
Interestingly, if I copy all the components to a new document, the axes are oriented properly again.
Any guesses?
hello, I don’t see anything wrong in your gif. Modifying axes won’t modify standard views as they are related to the world origin. I personaly avoid changing axes outside a group or a component.
Right click on one of the axes and pick reset to put the axes back the the world origin
Hi Chris! Right click on one of the axis lines and choose Reset.
I would suggest opening a new blank file from your template and checking to see if the axes had been rotated before you saved the template, too.
Hey Dave!
I had already tried resetting the axis. In doing so, it moved the axis back to the original position in the drawing and oriented my axes lines properly. BUT, my drawing was again skewed relative the axes lines – the issue I was trying to remedy (the drawing I am working on is based off imported geometry)
I may have misunderstood the axis in SketchUp. I was under the impression I could move the axis to a new position and that would ‘ground’ the drawing there, so to speak. It appears as though the best way to achieve the positional alignment I am looking for is to move the drawing to the axis and rotate it, rather than move the axis to the drawing. Is that a reasonable assessment?
If so, I see some potential drawbacks to this (e.g., hidden geometry ‘left behind’)
If not, what would be the better way to achieve this goal?
Hey Chris. The standard views are fixed and the default axis orientation is aligned to those views. The views are not driven by the axes. If you want the axes aligned with the model, you can move them but it won’t change the standard views. There’s an extension that can rotate the camera in the top view to align with the axes if you need it but maybe as you suggest, rotating the model would work fine. What is it a model of? If it’s a building that is geo-located maybe you shouldn’t rotate it.
FWIW, for geo-location the default orientation of the solid green axis is north.
Got it. I believed the standard views were relative the axis in the model, not relative an absolute position in the file.
The imported geometry is not geo-located, it just had the axis oriented along an edge which did not make sense. This is a new work-flow for me, utilizing measurements captured with a Leica P2P system – I hardly ever touch the axis, unless I am orienting to a face to aid in drawing in a component.
Perhaps a bit of elaboration will help you understand. SketchUp uses two sets of axes. The model axes are fixed and unchangeable. The standard views are tied to the model axes. In addition you can set “drawing axes” that affect how the inference directions are aligned while adding new items. These are what show on the display while you draw. They are also what you see while a group or component is open for edit. They are a visual help while drawing, but have no actual effect on the coordinates of your model in the model axes.
So when I move the axes without being in a component or group, I am moving the drawing axes only? Is there a way to view the model axes in such an instance?
Because, when I use the Axes tool to move or reorient the drawing axes, it appears to move the model axes. This is backed up by the fact that, when I go to Styles > Modelling Settings and check/uncheck Model Axes, the newly positioned axes is what disappears and reappears.
Only by inference. Either set a standard view or reset the drawing axes.
What you and I refer to as the model axes are the drawing axes that Steve refers to.
Right – so in the Style settings for Model Axes, what is actually being hidden/shown are the drawing axes, not the model axes. Is that a fair statement?
Yes although I’ll still call those axes model axes because that’s what they are called in Styles and the View menu.
A bit of advice: If you change the model/drawing axes keep it in mind. I’ve seen plenty of cases where the user moved the model axes either intentionally or unintentionally and then did a whole lot of modeling with the axes in what turned out to be the wrong orientation.
It just strikes me as odd that the standard views are always set relative an absolute model axes, as Steve mentioned, and yet, when one changes the drawing axes (say, 24" to the right of the original model axes, and oriented 45° to the original), what SketchUp then refers to as the model axes is, in fact, the drawing axes, not the original model axes.
It confuses things a bit, IMO.
I can see that. I’ve always preferred to think of it as I described where the views are just fixed and the default model axes are aligned with the views instead of the other way around.
Of course the other thing to think about is that the standard Front view doesn’t necessarily let you see the front of the model. It depends on the orientation you set the model in. For the furniture models I do I always orient the piece so the front is shown in the standard Front view so I don’t have to think too hard about which view I want to show a given side of the model. If I were to model my house with it geo-located, I would have to use the Back view to look at the front since the house faces north.
And this is what I was trying to address by moving the axes. My thought was that, when moving the axes, the standard views would then orient themselves to the axes. For instance, my house, geo-located, faces SSW. So, even if I positioned the axes to be aligned with the front face of my house, selecting the Front View would yield a skewed view of my house, facing true north (?), rather than squared to the face.
I could rotate the model to align the face of my house with the axes. This would give me the front elevation view I would be looking for, but I would lose the geo-located relevance of the drawing.
Yes. So you can align the views to the walls of the house.
For the plan view you can use Eneroth Relative Top View and for the elevations, Eneroth Align View.
I’ll have to give those a shot.
Thanks!