I am currently building a set of simplified nuts and bolts for construction purposes. I thought - hey - this might be a cool thing for snaps. I could just attach the bolts origin to the surface I want the nut+bolt connection to happen. But this little _______ won’t behave. It always reverses the bolts orientation. I have reset the axis of the component. No luck. I have “reversed” the snap orientation. No luck. I have manually tried to rotate the snap. No luck. It keeps aligning the bolt upside down to the surface. What’s the trick? I’ll attach the test file.
TEST.skp (343.9 KB)
Your right… 
Test-s.skp (566.8 KB)
You can right-click on a snap to reverse it. That should make it behave like you want it to.
Hold that thought… I think you are trying to make a snap attach to a face, and be able to orient ok. Checking into options for that…
If you had modeled a hole for the bolt to go through, that hole could also have a snap, and then the orienting would have made sense.
I will describe the issue to the developers, and see if there is something we should do, when moving a snap to a face that has no snap.
Isn’t that what the old fashioned gluing property is for?
There may be overlap with that. Can you alter the model so that it does what is needed, using glue instead of snaps?
This test seemed to work:
Right, that works if there is a destination snap. His model doesn’t have any destination snaps, but it might be reasonable for a source snap to orient to the ‘normal’ of a destination face, even if it doesn’t have any snaps. As it stands, the snap orients to be pointing outwards, regardless of which way the snap is pointing.
Okay, I thought they were supposed to have a snap to snap to.
Weirdly(?), they do snap if placed from the inside:
Maybe the ‘destination snap’ has a ‘reverse’ face and that’s why they orient correctly when hovering-over to place?
I had a similar issue and learned that snap require pairs (object and target) and both need to be oriented to mate. like polar magnets, they connect by polar direction. Object snap added to dynamic component won’t snap to face correctly - SketchUp / Dynamic Components - SketchUp Community
Thank you guys so much form your help. Yes - I thought I could use a snap to snap to a face. Ok - this doesn‘t work but glue might so I will explore that. Adding screws to a model is one of the most boring parts so I am trying to find ways to do it more quickly. I don‘t have counter-snap points in these type of models. Ok. I have to admit - every time I try to find a use for snaps (for us) I get set back by some limitation. This feature deserves some tweaking… 
Yes - this definitely feels counter-intuitive. Also it would be REALLY nice if the snap had a visible orientation. It’s basically total guessing what will happen if you use snaps. The sphere is a not really helping as an icon. Consider maybe a a circle (marking the center) with a triangle on the TOP so you can see XY direction and which way the snap is facing… Otherwise snaps will remain a super-niche function in the sketchup-tool-set.
They do when you are placing them or editing them.
The circle around the snap point uses the default material colors to indicate orientation. Here I’m using the 3D Printing Style with the red back face color.
When reversed:
You would want the front face color of the snap on the screw to be oriented to the threaded end, which you do, and the snap point on the receiving object to be oriented toward where the head should be.
FWIW, I think gluing would be more appropriate for things like screws. With snaps you would have to add snap points to the faces in the objects receiving the screws and then to use the saved screw component from your collection you would have to bring it in and drop it somewhere. Then you would grab it again to place it because when you get it from the Components panel you won’t have hold of it by the snap point. Using the gluing property would eliminate the need for adding snap points to the object the screw will be in and you can simply drag it in from the Components window and drop it where you want it immediately.
Hi @DaveR → Thanks for pointing out the what the circle color of the snap means - I didn’t catch that at first. Learned something new today. And yes - I’ll move to “glue”. 
However dear Sketchup-Team - snaps still seem to have potential in my opinion. I NOW understand the idea that a snap is supposed to just click to another snap but why limit it there? I have a whole library of objects that I would love to define with easy snap points but in almost all cases the counter-part is a surface or a beam where it wouldn’t make sense to add a whole bunch of snaps. Something to consider.
You could try this: Quick Snaps | SketchUp Extension Warehouse for a whole bunch of snaps.
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That’s a helpful tip! I didn’t realize the snap circle color changed with default color.
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It’s kind of subtle with the default back face color used with most styles and if you are doing something silly like using the same color for both front and back faces you’d have a difficult time getting it right.
I must admit I have struggled from day one to find a use case in my workflow that benefits from snaps. They just seem like to much effort for a specific connection.
Perhaps joining multiple pipe fittings together, but then I’d be more likely to work them as a path.
I’d be happy to be shown a good use of snaps, I’m sure there are and I’m just seeing things from one direction.
I use them quite a bit to model piping. I have a collection of components (pipes, fittings, valves, etc) with snaps. A bit niche and not the only way to model piping, but helpful for me.
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