Perfectly Align Sphere on Long Skinny Cylinder

SketchUp
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1

Hello all,

I’d appreciate a tip here… I am attempting to perfectly align a sphere on a long and skinny cylinder (i.e. “rod”). I need to make sure that a.) the rod goes directly through the center of the sphere, and, additionally, that the center of the sphere (which you can’t see, because it’s inside the sphere) is aligned directly on the center of the rod, from top to bottom.

With a sphere, there doesn’t seem to be the standard “center of object” points to grab.

The following image should provide some clarity.

665×815 23.6 KB

I can eye-ball it fairly well, but I don’t want to go through 10 hours of printing to find out I was off by 5%.

Thanks so much!!!

Trip

2

Use the circle of the cylinder to create the sphere already centered.

1 Like
3

If the objects are already there, you can use TIGs CenterpointAll (shortcut) in combination with the Xray mode…

4

Turn on Hidden Geometry so you can infer to the smoothed edges and endpoints on the rod and sphere. It is often easiest to move the sphere first to align it in one axis direction and then on the other instead of trying to move it directly to place in one go.

Anssi

5

Box, Cotty and Anssi,

Thanks so very much!

Happy Holidays to all! :smiley:

Trip