I have a cylinder that I am trying to draw another circle through the diameter of. If I draw the circle directly on the endpoint of one of the points on the circle it orients to the face that make up the sides of the cylinder. I want it to orient to the Y plane of the model. I tried building a cube that I could snap the orientation of the circle to but when I use shift to lock the orientation of the circle it is constrained to the plane of the face of the cube I have created and I cannot get it to snap to the edge of the circle. How do I go about doing this?
With the ‘Circle’ tool hover over face you need the plane of.
Do not click yet! Press and hold down [Shift] to get the tool constrained to that face’s orientation.
Now move the cursor to where you want to start the circle and first click its center and continue drawing the circle as usual.
In your case hover over the ground plane and constrain the visual blue circle orientation by holding down [Shift]. Take it to wher you want it to be, … the cilinder top endpoint?
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if not already make the cylinder a component, then place its axis at the point where you want the attached circle,(right click context menu…change axis), now open component use left arrow for Y restraint and place circle, should work.
As @pcmoor says, if you know the circle will be oriented to an axes you can tap the “c” key to start a circle then immediately tap the left, right, or up keys to lock the axis.
I am assuming SketchUp 16 here. Previous versions did not have this axis locking for the circle tool.
This is the best answer, along with the one below concerning locking the plane to one of the cardinal axes.
By the way, this ‘orientation lock’ feature works for many other tools. It’s really good for the “Rotate” tool, for instance.