aligning objects

Support Basics & Interface
1

I’m sure this has been answered, but I can’t find it in the search.

How does one have Blender rotate a mesh so that one of its face normals aligns with an axis ?
For that matter, how does one align an object so that one of its faces is precisely parallel to one of another object’s faces ?

2

The only way I know of is to snap the vertices of a mesh to the grid and then press “R” to rotate and hold CTRL to snap to multiples of 5 degrees in your rotation, or CTRL + SHIFT to constrain movement to 1 degree. Good luck!

Here’s a link that’ll help with this some:

http://www.vrotvrot.com/support/showitem.php?faq_id=122

3

Hmm. I want a hotkey like the *-key (rotate view to object) that will rotate the object to align the selected face with an axis (or other vector) in one step.
The nearest I’ve got to it is to:

  • select the object
  • press ‘*’ to rotate view to object
  • add an empty
  • parent the object to the empty
  • select the empty and press ‘n’
  • set all the rotations to zero
  • unparent the object keeping the transform
4

I’ve never had to deal with this kind of precision. Maybe because I like to have fun and don’t like to work.
two tricks I’ve used. Extrude a vert or a face to where you want the aligned object to be (or beyond that point). If you extrude thru the stationary object then you can use a face on the inside (one facing the aligned object) to line it all up.
Use a plane and scale it to fit the gap between the two objects and a cube if they are not on the same level of the co-ordinate.
When the jobs done delete the extrusion, plane, whatever. Put it on another layer if you are going to need it again.

%<

5

Oh Lord, this shouldn’t be a problem. If I want to face someone to talk with them I just align my face so that my nose points antiparallel with their’s.

Let’s have a hotkey in 2.27+ that aligns the selected object so that its selected face is perpendicular with a given vector, say the z-axis.

We need an align menu:

  • select a face of an object A
    (* select face of an object B)
  • align menu:
    > align with x/y/z
    > align with selected face of B
6

I agree but you’re telling the wrong people. Goto blender.org and tell them. THey’re the developers. Of course, making faces paralell WOULD be easy with a python script…after all its just making two vectors coincident but opposite in direction to each other. Theeth…whaddya think about this?

7

more or less easy in Python, don’t know how hard it would be in the source.

Martin

8

Well theeth, if you could throw something like that together for us, and I know thats asking a lot of someone who’s obviously busy with more important things, that’d be really cool. There’s obvious a demand for it, at least here. Thanks!

9

I can’t say when it will be ready, but I’ll try.

man, I’ve got some many scripts to finish, it’s incredible!

Martin

10

Thanks again man! We owe ya one!