After using SU for about four years, having come from CAD, there’s one thing I still miss (apart from many others that I don’t): The ability to copy from a base point and paste at any arbitrary position, whether inside or outside of entities. I’m not even talking about pasting to an origin determined just by typing coordinates.
SU’s Paste in Place function doesn’t do the same thing.
Pasting close to the desired position often results in the pasted object being moved, rotated, or otherwise adjusted, especially when there are many other objects around that SU tries to inference to. Copying a line drawn from the world origin together with the object works when copying from another file.
Often, in context the origin leaps back to a prior location or the world origin. So far, I haven’t succeeded in understanding when or why that happens.
Perhaps I’m simply not familiar with snaps or the other features of component orientation. However, copying with basepoint, changing the origin (which is maintained independently of other actions), and pasting to it would be extremely fast and precise.
Does anyone know of an extension that toggles the axis behavior (or rather, the origin’s)? Sometimes, the SU behavior is useful. As I said before, in a complex environment, it would be great to have that functionality when you don’t want to isolate tags.
Yes, there are available axis tools e.g. by Thomthom and D. Bur, but they don’t offer what I’m looking for.
SketchUp’s plain Paste command will attach new instances of the objects on the clipboard to the mouse cursor. You can then position them anywhere you wish with the mouse or by entering coordinates (as explained in the in Drawing Basics help article.)
Another workflow is to use the Move tool in copy mode. Select the objects, tap M, then tap the CTRL (Win) | Option (MacOS) key to put the tool into copy mode. Again position the copy with the mouse or enter coordinates.
The Paste in Place command is tied to the origin of the copied objects by design, as you have noticed.
This is where Paste in Place should work… I don’t understand needing to draw a line from the work origin to the copied object.
I often will draw a guide / measurement line if I am bringing something from one different model to another and want a common reference - say for instance a cupola from one model into another model - I will draw a guideline along the ridge with a defined center point, etc.
You should record a screen capture showing this behavior. I don’t follow how this happens, especially copy / paste in place from one model to another, or even within the same model - moving from the general modeling context into a component context.
I’m familiar with all kinds of copy modes, but I didn’t know that I could enter absolute or relative coordinates using square or angle brackets within the Move tool/Copy mode. Thanks! However, I couldn’t figure out how this works with the paste command. The measurements box remains inactive after hitting Cmd+V.
Even if I understood both solutions, it seems that copying and pasting an object with 100% precision from one origin to a different location, including the angles of all axes, is still unavailable.
What works, though, is this: Copy an object, set the new origin to any position, then paste your object. It will hover, attached to the cursor, in the same direction and angle as when it was copied. Position it to your new origin. In this case, the origin within the group or component will snap to the current origin.
This workflow is quite close to the one I’ve still built into my mouse hand but consist of a few more steps.
No, it doesn’t snap to the entity’s origin. I checked again. (Still learning everyday.)
No matter where you copy it from, the object is simply placed closely in the corner between the red, green, and blue axes of your new origin. When copying only the orientation in space relative to the world origin is respected. The position and orientation relative to any other current origin is ignored.
Perhaps no relative coordinates as there is no real origin or “base point of displacement” (to use AutoCAD terms.) But the VCB (Measurements box) should accept absolute coordinates in this case (during a Paste.)
By the way, in a plain Paste operation, the origin for the contents of the clipboard appear to be the point which would be a corner of the BoundingBox having the lowest value for x,y,z, even if some are negative values.
I’ll work with the concept of a virtual bounding box that is always aligned with the world origin. This contains the copied object within its own visible box, in whatever orientation. When pasting, the virtual box will be oriented along any current origin. You can drop the object anywhere, but if you drop it close to the current origin, it will snap to the point closest to the world origin, even if that point wasn’t there at all when the object was copied (also with negative x, y and z values, as you pointed out).
This axis behavior seems a little odd, don’t you think? It feels better now as I can use it consciously, but I still miss the simple and consistent axis behavior in CAD.
Anyone at Trimble’s SketchUp team willing to program an extension?
Just for clarity, I think we should be saying “axes” not origin. (I.e., the origin of any axes is a property whose value is a point. Likewise each of the 3 axis are properties whose value is a vector.)
SketchUp’s “world” axes (including it’s origin) is the model axes and is immovable. But we do have a customizable “drawing axes”, (comparable to AutoCAD’s UCS,) that we can change and save with a scene page’s properties. SketchUp’s native tools should honor any custom drawing axes if set. (Ruby tools need to specifically be coded to check and honor any active user drawing axes.)
There are several extensions that exist for custom user axes control (memory and reuse.) Check the Extension Warehouse doing a search on “axes”.
Just a thought: Do you have Model Info > Units > Length Snapping on or off ?
But yes, I think I recall other users complaining that the origin inference is too dominant. (Note that in SketchUp they are not called “snaps”. SketchUp Snaps are a complex object used by components for orientation and locking together.)
I will admit I haven’t had time to test thoroughly in the past few days.
I did notice that the cursor seems to be weirdly displaced from the objects being pasted. It would also be helpful if the bounding box were shown whilst the objects are connected to the cursor.
I think that @TedVitale_SU would be more interested in an option for the native PasteTool. Currently the tool does not appear to use any modifier key.
So to help Ted out here, would would wish to have a modifier for the PasteTool (tapping ALT|Option or CTRL|Command) that toggles between aligning to the world axes, local axes or user axes?
And if so, would you want the tool to stay in that alignment mode for subsequent tool uses in that modeling session? If so, would each open model have it’s own mode memory (since each model has it’s own tool collection) ?
I must have installed and uninstalled all of them. Didier Bur’s Axes Tools was most suitable for me but momentarily it causes a bug within the latest SU update so I uninstalled it once more.
Agreed! It’s always good to use a precise terminology.
They do, and I frequently use that ability, even though Tyson’s tutorials on improving one’s inferencing skills made it partly obsolete for me. Now, I switch between methods adapted to the task.
Some extensions honor the current axis position (e.g., Eneroth’s Flatten to Plane), which is extremely useful, but it can be time-consuming to distinguish them from extensions that do not.
Simply put: Yes! As Trimble, I would maintain the familiar logic and add a feature that would make SketchUp more accessible to former CAD users like me. Additionally, I would suggest clarifying the axis behavior if that is considered fruitful for the existing logic.
I’d definitely suggest a toggle tool for subsequent uses only as long as the tool is active. After that, it should behave like other tools that return to the default mode when a different tool is selected.
Crash Headsup: Got a BugSplat! crash # 188128 when I closed SU2025 while there were objects on the clipboard and the PasteTool was active but the objects not yet placed.
NOTE: Also reproduced in 24.0.594. Appears to only happen with a custom template with reverse video (black background) work template.
Just to clarify steps to reproduce, create a custom template (maybe with a black background?) grab an object and copy it to clip board, close SketchUp = crash.
I’m not seeing this in the version im working on, but Ill go check the release build and try and reproduce.
If I understood correctly, there are no remaining key combinations with “C” and “V” in the standard shortcut setup. Therefore, I suggest a toolset containing only “Copy from current origin” and “Paste to current origin.” See the attached mockup, which honors the current icon design.
This is a great recommendation! Can you say a little more about type type of thing you’re trying to do? For instance, is this something where you want to copy things from floor to floor?
Sure can! It’s actually quite simple. Ideally, I’d like to be able to copy an object from any axis origin and paste it at a different origin of my choice. The distance and angle of the copied and pasted object should relate consistently to the current origin of each axis origin rather than to the world origin, as is the case in SketchUp now.
Please refer to my initial post at the top of this thread and the subsequent discussion, which hopefully describes the missing functionality completely.
As many SketchUp users are familiar with the current behavior, I suggest adding a separate toolbox or an extension, as illustrated in an earlier image.
Former CAD users like myself will probably understand why I want this, because the absolute precision and speed of this copy-and-paste procedure would save a lot of time compared to pasting to a location where there are lots of inferencing points or faces.
The steps would be: 1. Set the axis to a useful position. 2. Open the toolbox and select “Copy from current origin.” 3. Set the origin to a different location. 4. Use “Paste object to new origin” in the same relation to the new origin as to the previous one.
Ideally, this would be combined with the ability to step back and forth between the two origins.
I’m aware that there are at least two strategies for working with components in SU that can lead to a similar workflow, but they require a lot more thinking ahead and preparation.
Hey, that’s a great further description. I appreciate the detail. It reminds me of the “From” snap and Temporary Tracking in CAD, Snaps and Guides in SketchUp, and array commands in general.
However, I was just playing around with different move operations, and I wondered if picking a component directly from the Component Browser does what you’re looking for.
I’m curious if this gets you closer to the outcome you’re looking for: Try moving the contents in a component so that they are not at the origin.
If you copy and paste a component similar to this using keyboard shortcuts, you’ll notice you’re placing it by the “bottom left” of its bounding box; however, if you place the component by picking it in the Component Browser, you’ll be placing it by its origin.
Does the ability to place a component by its origin using the mouse accomplish what you’re looking for, or are you looking for something more like a “paste-in-place on each building level” kind of command?
One never stops learning! I did not know that the “pick from component browser” tool places objects by their origin in orientation of the current origin. Great! It’s especially useful considering you can quickly change a component’s origin outside of context. However, I only tested this in a very simple model. I will have to see how it works in a more complex environment. Thank you very much anyway! This way, I have something very close to what I was looking for.
In an ideal SketchUp world, though, I’d love to be able to copy and paste any kind of entity (well, only groups and components, actually) from and to any origin in the model deliberately. During the early design phases, features like that allow you to test things really fast.
A toolbar that combines axis functionalities, such as stepping back and forth with origins and returning to the world origin (D. Bur’s axis tools do that), with the copy/paste functionality I described earlier, or maybe just a button that toggles the well-known SU method, might make SU even more accessible to ex-CAD users like me.
