so I and others surely did not mean to upset you, just trying to figure out what you mean. And now we know 
I do agree, but as I inferred in my latest post it must be determined what happens when you click on your screen without inferencing. @davidaschiffer referred to Autocad, but that is essentially a 2D or, if you like it, 2 1/2D environment and what you draw gets its Z value from an âelevationâ system variable.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Beware of the Comfy Chair!
Yours is a quite legitimate feature request, but we would like you to tell what you expect from it. I have often wished for a possibility to select the set of inferences I want to be âonâ.
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thank you -
however i believe you are the only one to back me on
the feature
the rest seem to think i am from a different Universe
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So if you draw freely with inferencing off, you still draw on the current xy plane, or so I always thought, until I now tested it.
from the first rather free form, that lands on red/green plane, I force a vertical line, and then turn off inferencing again. my second plane drawn with no inferencing now starts on the new height. I was sure those lines would fall back into âground planeâ. ( And they do, but only if you snap to a surface on that plane. Otherways you draw freely on your new paralell plane) This is back to basic research for me âŚ
He showed a scenario where it might be useful. I was only asking for you to do the same. I didnât say you were wrong either. Just wanted to understand and you still havenât explained why.
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I agree with @Anssi . The only cases in which Iâve seen snapless drawing in 3D were when the software includes a concept of âworking planeâ (which is actually another form of snap). Without a third constraint to go with the x,y of the screen position, distance from the camera is impossible to determine.
So the question really should be âwhat form of constraint would you want to implicitly or explicitly include when snapping is turned off?â
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I think we all should calm down a little.
Itâs okay to ask follow up questions to a feature request. It is quite common that the same end result can already be achieved in SketchUp, but in a slightly different way. Such questions arenât meant as an attack of the idea or the poster.
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I think it would basically need locking to some known plane. Yesterday I found another use case. I have imported a DWG map and I wanted to use the freehand tool to sketch a freeform âblobâ shape on it to start a design, but it was impossible as the tool kept snapping to everything on the map. I know I am able to devise a workaround but, well, it IS a Freehand tool, isnât it!
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Thatâs the only example I know of, but I left the door open for other ideas since I donât know everyoneâs use cases or goals.
We already have an example when you draw a rectangle in a blank file: it snaps onto the xy, xz, or yz plane depending on camera direction. The working plane concept present in some other 3D apps is more flexible. You can have planes anywhere in the space oriented any way you want (though viewing the working plane edge-on collapses it to useless). However, the last 3D app I used (before SketchUp) worked that way, and it drove me nuts! Endless aggravation switching the working plane around to get new lines to go where I wanted them.
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The simplest âinferences offâ scenario might work âas if in a blank fileâ. Respecting the current user set axis might give a good enough âworking planeâ system.
And Length snapping could be replaced with simple grid-type snapping.
In SketchUp you can control this planes with Axes tool.
Can you describe a situation where snapping is a problem? Embracing the inferencing in SketchUp is a good thing, and itâs incredibly easy to override it by hovering away from the inference points.
I really cannot think of any situation where I would turn off snapping in sketchup.
I work mostly with spherical models. So most of my edges / faces are not parallel to any of the primary planes, Mostly no problem but sometimes the inference engine will stick on one direction, even if a point I want to draw a line to appears to be closer. Hovering around mostly works, but not always. Only solution is to zoom in and orbit. To be able to briefly switch off the inference engine with a key press, or in this case just the directions part, would be a nice feature.
If I understand this correctly itâs the same issue Iâve experiencing every now and then. I think this could be solved by having the inference engine always prioritize 3d points (endpoints, midpoints, etc) over From Line.
If I understand this correctly itâs the same issue Iâve experiencing every now and then. I think this could be solved by having the inference engine always prioritize 3d points (endpoints, midpoints, etc) over From Line.
Yes, it seems like the inference to a line parallel to an axis shown by the little coloured axis squares has more âweightâ in the engine. I can understand that because mostly that is what people would want, and chances are the point may be on that line. But if not, the ability to change the priority would be a bonus.
Remember that you can Zoom, Pan, Rotate, change scene, change rendering mode, etc even in the middle of any operation.
Zooming in, for example, may block some unwanted snaps from too close endpoints. This is only one example.
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