Aligning vertices/faces to the xy plane in Blender?

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi, I was wondering how I could align the selected vertices or faces to the xy plane… (so the vertices’ z = 0) I want them to stay attached to the rest of the mesh.
3D Studio Max has the “View Align” function, but it is a very long story why I can’t use it for this particular model and still be able to get it into Blender… the main problem is that it takes forever to weld the hundreds of thousands of vertices within 3d Studio Max (I’ve waited for many minutes a couple times - it even takes a minute or so to weld about 100 or 500 of the vertices in the terrain).
Basically I want to make the selected “road” in the terrain be perfectly flat to make animation a lot easier. The road should be properly attached to the main terrain - so it would be a selection within the terrain mesh rather than a new mesh.
I hope someone can help, thanks.

2

tried constraints? i’m not sure u can, just a hint.

P.S. separating the vertices § works pretty well if u don’t plan to move them too much…

3

  1. place the 3d cursur anywhere in the scene but with the z coordinate at zero. (“shift s” snap to grid works well)

  2. select all the verticies that you want lined up.

  3. press the “.” key. This constrains scaling and rotating around the 3d cursor.

  4. scale the verticies towards the 3d cursor (press the middle mouse button to constrain the scaling in the z-axis only.

  5. by holding down the ctrl key while you scale, it is easy to get them down to exactly zero.

Hope this helps.

4

Thanks… it took a while pressing ctrl, s, etc, in the right way but I eventually did it…

5

Single vertexes can be maneuvered to strict locations by the following process:

  • Select vertex
  • Nkey
  • Shift-select value to change
  • type in the number you want
  • click OK or hit Enter

I have an object I’m working on, in which I was given exact dimensions for each section at the various “stations”, and Nkey came in VERY handy to turn it into a 3d model.

6

“Single vertexes can be maneuvered to strict locations by the following process:”

Yeah, though it takes a long time to align hundreds of vertices to z=0 using that method…

Thanks for that “shift-click” tip for typing in the locations - sometimes I can do a type-in without using shift (e.g. RGB values) but that one you have to use shift… (I assumed you couldn’t type in the position)