how do you snap or align vertices to a plane? I have moved the seam vertices off of the center line in a component that I want to mirror for sub division modeling. Can I snap them all back in one selection?
It’s very hard give a relevant answer without more clarification. Can you attach the Sketchup file in a post here, or at least post a screenshot of what you are trying to do?
TIG’s Flatten to Plane can do this. You’ll also need his Work Plane extension to set the plane to project the vertices to.
There’s other extensions that let you make a selection planar, like Vertex Tools and Artisan. It might be that I don’t know how to use them but I don’t think you can set the plane to snap to, they make them planar at an average plane. Artisan lets you set best fit or xy, xz, yz etc.
Here you can see a component mirrored with some of the central vertices moved off their plane so that the 2 halves of the mirrored components don’t meet. I want to snap them all back to the center line
It looks like you already have Vertex Tools. Use its make planar function or scale them in the green axis and type zero for scale. You might then have to move them with the green arrow.
Set the Gizmo aligned to the plane you want to snap to.
If I set the gizmo off a reference plane, I can scale the points parallel to that plane and scale to zero to make them planar and parallel to the reference plane, but it doesn’t move them to the plane.
upload your file please.
If you have the gizmo set in the right direction, scale to zero in green, then use vertex tools move tool to move them to the centre point, holding shift when you get the inference of the correct direction to move it.
This is what I meant with using Vertex tools to scale to 0 in green then move in the green direction to the origin. This would let you mirror it on the green axis but probably not ideal as it splits the other faces, as the lines going across the seat aren’t level.
You might be better to project those lines through the xz plane by extending them parallel to each line, then make a big rectangle on the xz plane and intersect faces to chop off the bits of chair that go through the plane. As there’s not that many lines it wouldn’t take too long.
Sorry, I was thinking you meant you could only align them to the axes, I read too quickly while dealing with the man at the door replacing my door handle.
I would just select the whole edge and make planner then mirror it.
You should work without materials or in monochrome mode so you can keep your face orientation under control.
thanks for your insights. Much appreciated
One thing also to keep in mind, if you import your images as ‘Images’ rather than as ‘Textures’ they will stay visible in Monochrome mode.
So is there a way to model off a plane with two symmetrical sides, as for a car or you always have to rework the center plane and mirror one side (repeatedly as you work)? Seems like this would be a good tool- also the ability to constrain to an angle or a tangent curve–or not --across the center. (this is isn’t typically my line of work)
I don’t really understand the question, perhaps an image or a sample model would help to give an answer.
I guess the first question would be is there a way you can have two mirror sides (like components), and they are always visible and always joined at the center plane but model in symmetry.
The second part would be Is there a need to control the vertices at the center plane so they blend with adjacent geometry, for example for an even car roof surface.
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Make one half as a component. Copy it to the other side and either flip it in the appropriate axis or scale in that direction by -1 so you have a mirror image. Line them up side by side. Now when you edit one half, the other half mirrors it as you work. If you have View->Component Edit->Hide Similar Components on a keyboard shortcut, you can toggle visibility of the other mirrored copy at the press of a key.
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You might have some tidying up to do at the end to blend them in as you might have a ridge or a dip in your car roof if you weren’t careful.