In previous versions, most recently 2016, I am able to hold left, right, up or down arrow keys to move a selected object on it’s axis. i.e. To move an object on the Red axis I hold the right arrow key while dragging with the Move tool.
In 2017 this is not working. I have checked all the related factors- enabled Length and angle snapping. OpenGL is set to the default 4x anti-aliasing plus Use fast feedback is turned on.
These settings are the exact settings I have been using for years and this feature has worked fine.
Any ideas or things I can check or is this a bug?
click arrow to lock, click different arrow to change, click same again to unlock…
start move hold shift to lock…
does that not all work?
john
John,
Thanks but no, that does not work. One other note is I retained the install of 2016. Though I do not believe that has any impact on this feature as all other features work as expected. PS: I have GL version 4.5
I don’t think anything was deliberately changed about this from 2016 to 2017 - at least it behaves exactly the same on my Mac.
Re what John wrote, I think you have to select the move tool, click something, and move the cursor to start the move before you press one of the arrow keys. But once you get the lock, you don’t have to hold the arrow key down. Holding it doesn’t cause an error, it just isn’t necessary.
In contrast, if you start a move along an inferred direction and press shift to lock the move to that direction, you do have to hold down the shift key until you complete the move.
Guys, thanks.
Just an FYI: I have been using SketchUp since 2011 and I have never used the shift key to “Lock” the movement.
I have always just held down a direction key while moving with the mouse in the desired axis direction.
I have tried the shift key now and it still shows no solution to the issue.
I am going to remove 2016 and see if that makes a difference. Will let you know.
Thanks!
Removing all instances of SketchUp and re-installing 2017(latest version) did not fix.
I’ll just keep using 2016 but thanks anyway!
You shouldn’t hold down any direction key to lock to one of the three axes.
The direction keys toggle to locking to a specific axis on/off.
See answers above.
Holding down one of these keys may be your problem.
Holding down the [Shift] key for locking only works when you see the colored R or G or B, indicating the direction at that moment, or when locking to any existing edge or face or guide.
gardeg,
did you resolve this problem? as one of my co-workers is now having the same problem on his computer.
Thanks,
Mark
It’s just a toggle thing. Don’t hold the cursor key. Click the tool, click to start it then press and release the appropriate cursor key to look the direction.
I am using 2019 and experiencing the same problem. I know how to use Move and use it in all aspects with a single touch of the key to lock the movement. What I am experiencing is that the axis will not lock for the red axis in this case the green and blue axis lock and work perfectly and the move is unable to find a corner point with/without the locked axis… any thoughts?
What is it you are moving? Can you share a SketchUp model file that shows this problem?
Good day, here was my work around - I completely exploded the block and then reconstituted the planes as a group - problem solved. It seems the problem is with the geometry within the object that somehow must have gotten corrupted.
It was probably a component with gluing properties. Exploding it would remove the gluing and groups can’t have gluing properties set. Too bad you didn’t share it as I asked so we could help you identify the problem.
The object was a kitchen shelving cabinet with an object on the shelf and a crown molding that was a group within a component. I simply exploded the group until I was left with planes, then I created a new group and then locking and movement went back to normal. Perhaps that will help someone else.
I’ll share the file so you can examine it. I kept a copy of the file… I’m a busy CEO so I just look for solutions and move on. I’ll post the file shortly none-the-less. I rarely have time to talk about the dozens of issues I have encountered over time but I usually solve them as I wrote early hiddenline algorithms 40 years ago. 
link… Dropbox - 3065 Chadwick - 2 units1-cabinet issue.skp - Simplify your life
It’s the cabinet I moved out the kitchen area that is now free floating in the model you’ll find in the link.
The point is what you were seeing is most likely correct and expected behavior. You probably were trying to move a component the had been intentionally set to glue to a given plane. My guess is you downloaded this from the warehouse. Exploding and grouping is a fix, like Dave said, but it’s a sledgehammer for a loose bolt. You could just hit unglue.
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Several of the components in that cluster of components and groups have gluing properties set so it shouldn’t be a surprise that you can only move it in the plane to which it was originally anchored. And as I said, exploding the components removes the gluing. It would be faster and less work to just edit the components and remove the gluing properties but I guess you solved it your way so all’s good.
It would be a good idea to make sure you are using Tags/Layers correctly. Lot’s of edges and faces are incorrectly tagged.
And purge unused stuff once in awhile.
That knocked more than 50% off the file size.
thanks for your comments - as this element was not really being used as a component in this model, i.e., one use, it just took 4 explodes and one regroup to fix the issue (30 seconds). This was just a quick study model and so there is just one layer, tags only came from 3D warehouse imported items, however, I do appreciate the comments and will ensure they get passed onto my team for what they are doing in our actual rather than conceptual quick studies.
I have the same problem, I use sketchup 2019. There’s some facts I found:
- Can’t draw starting line on red axis
- If you start making line in green/blue axis the next line you can continue line in red axis
I tried some doesn’t make sense experiments and found out a fix to this problem:
- Draw any shape/object
- Rotate the object using red axis as its parameter (as rotating point)
- Rotate it, then when you done you can draw starting line and move object on red axis again