I have imported a sprocket to my “axle” window. I want to drop the sprocket onto the axle. But the sprocket is wobbled on the axis of the model I imported it to by some unspecified degrees.
I SIMPLY want to align the axial centers and planes of the imported component with the component I’m working on.
I tried to use the ‘axes’ “glue to” and “set component axis” function while making a component out of the sprocket. I followed youtube tutorials and spent hours in frustration. To no avail.
I downloaded and installed fredo6 “movealignme”. I watched youtube tutorials. I followed all instructions to a tee. To no avail.
Someone tell me. Why TF is this not so simple as what the Axes function in the large tool set, in the first place, promises to do… but does not deliver?
To whit…
…simply select “axes”. Click the three axis icon onto the selected component face. And then just click a box that says “snap to model”.
How fu@@ing hard can that be? Why is this a function that requires you to spin in circles, rub your belly counterclockwise, rub your head clockwise, while reciting the alphabet backwards?
If you just need to rant a bit to blow off some steam I understand. However, if you actually want an answer on how to align those two objects you need to attach your .skp file.
Steam. Yes. There’s a bit of that. And I hope to be forgiven. This really does seem like it ought to be a first tier function in sketchup that is intuitively easy. It’s possible I’m an idiot. It would not be the first time.
I would be deeply in your debt if this turns out to be really easy.
I fixed all the axis in your model and alligned the axle and the sprocket.
You should learn how to draw on axis, it will make your life a lot easier.
The axle I had to rotate about red and green to fix it.
The sprocket I had to rotate about red, green and bleu to fix it.
I also had to reset your world axis because they were upside down.
I made the sprocket and axle solid, there were stray edges, internal faces and reversed faces.
Open the fixed model and compare it to yours.
Edit: I see that @Box beat me to it. Basically I did what he shows in the video…
Edit 2: Your sprocket has 14 teeth. If you would have chosen 28 sides for the circles in the sprocket, you would have gotten cleaner geometry. To match the axle I would have made it with 28 sides too…
To address a few things. I googled how to align faces in Sketchup. Then same query with objects. Then components. And a few other variations on the question. I did not simply give up in five minutes and rant on a board. There dozens of approaches discussed on forums and youtube. They are all complicated well beyond the illustrated use of the rotate tool here. The rotate tool was the second I attempted after the axes tool, since it looked intuitive. But it’s far from intuitive apparently since i gave it a lot of effort and could not get it to ever submit to my aims. I’ll look really closely at the demonstration here to see what I was doing wrong.
Not a few of the “answers” online to aligning faces resorted to using the follow me tool extend an imported face onto one of the model’s axes. Thereby create a solid. Then erase all but your face section. It was usually pointed out that this would distort the result. A circle, for instance, would end up slightly ovaled as a result. One forum thread concluded with the person suggesting this method saying “you’ll just have to live with that. Sketchup is not supposed to be used for too much accuracy”. And that was the end of the discussion thread.
amazing
I still don’t understand why this is not a straightforward application of the axis tool. That would eliminate all the possibility for error in selecting and moving points with the rotate tool. Select axis points on the component… click a box that says “glue/pin/align (etc) axes of component with model”
As to learning to draw on axis, the sprocket was imported, from the “3D Warehouse” into my drawing of the shaft. I expect the shaft was drawn on axes. It’s an extremely simple drawing not more than a few minutes old that was drawn on a newly opened session. How could it not be on axes? What do I misunderstand there? Wouldn’t I almost have had to try to draw it off axis? If I draw a circle on the “floor” next to the human model shown in the opening session is that not automatically on axes? As I progress with the next half dozen steps to push/pull … how could I have strayed from axes? Was the imported sprocket off axes?
Thank you for the hint about circle segments and geometry. Was the model incorrect coming from the Warehouse?
If I were drawing a structure, a home, an automobile, I understand. I think.
But with a simple axle and shaft, does it make a difference? I’m not being even a little bit facetious. From an ease of drawing standpoint is it better to be oriented “up” or “down” for such a simple drawing as this? I’m kind of in the weeds logically here. Even I’m not certain what orientation this Sprocket and axle will be in when it’s put to eventual use. So what is the up or down that applies here in my drawing?
SketchUp’s view related tools (Orbit etc.) work best when blue axis points “up”. Yes, deep space or a small part has in itself no “up” or “down” but originally SketchUp and many other 3D applications based their experience of 3D space to the needs of architects and the like.
That would imply that the axes either got moved away from their default location and orientation shortly after you started the model or you’ve created a template with the axes shifted and oriented upside down
Modeling on axis, and in a case like this model, centered on the origin, makes the entire process including aligning objects much easier. Placing the component axes logically also helps. In this case I set the sprocket’s origin at the center of the hole.
Maybe you drew it on axis but it sure is not on axis in the model you shared…
Possibly you rotated it slightly during your struggles with the sprocket, who knows…
I allready told you that I had to allign the sprockets axis, the shafts axis and reset the world axis in your model.
Edit: also all the shaft and axle components in your in model components that I didn’t inspect untill now, are off axis…
Pushpull doesn’t “know” about axes. It always stays perpendicular to the face you are extruding.
Whether that face is on axis or not.
Again, in the model you shared, yes.
There are a lot of flawed models on the 3DWarehouse, maybe this sprocket is one of them.
If you share the link to the sprocket, we could check its axis…
The usual way to work in sketchup when you have the ground and sky showing is to have the sky up, this just makes it easier to look at and orientate yourself. Each to their own but here I put it to what I personally find normal.
Then if the component you have is off axis you can use the right click context menu option Change axis, this also sets the insertion point of the component, which for some reason is set to place it below where you click.
So three clicks, click to set the insertion point, click to set the red axis, click to set the green axis, done.
There are 3 extensions you’ll find VERY useful for aligning things:
JHS PowerBar (available from Sketchucation) - includes a widget to align on red, green, or blue axis. Note that if one of the objects is completely “outside” of the other, it will move BOTH of them to an average position on that axis. So you might want to manually bring it as close as possible and then use the extension.
Julia Eneroth’s “Center Of Mass” - creates 3 axis lines through the calculated center of mass of an object (note: not necessarily the visual center, if there are holes in the object). Then you can just select the object and the Center Of Mass axes and drag them to align.
“Add Centerpoint” - exactly what it says on the tin. Places a tiny cross-hair in the geometric center of a face or edge (whatever you have selected). (Note: if you have a very complex shape and you have all of it selected, Add Centerpoint will cheerfully generate centerpoints for each face and edge, so you end up with a porcupine. Select exactly what you need to Centerpoint.)
bonjour, je précise ma question, il s’agit d’une réponse (maintenant fermée) que vous avez fait au sujet de l’alignement de deux pièces, un engrenage et un axe. Ces objets sont ronds, d’où ma question de savoir si, votre solution s’applique aussi aux formes autres que circulaires.
merci
