Is there a way to orient an object to 3d cursor?

Support Basics & Interface
1

Basically i would like to use 3d cursor for placement and orientation of added meshes to the scene. Is there a way to do that?

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2

This would be fantastic. The next best thing is to use Shift-S and choose “Snap Selected to cursor”.

3

I have seen this once on a “blender today” Livestream. He was able to orient the 3d cursor to a surface by clicking on it and then add objects according to the orientation of the 3D cursor. But never tried it if it was actually implemented.
I’ll try to find it again

4

It can be done in 2.8 by applying the following steps:

  • Create a new inclined surface
  • Select that surface in Edit Mode
  • Cursor to Selected
  • Open Tranform Orientations Popup and click the + sign on the rightside
  • Cursor to Selected
  • Exit Edit Mode
  • Pivot Point to 3d Cursor
  • Add a new object
  • Object Menu > Transform > Align to Transform Orientation
  • Snapping > Face
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5

i think this is planned to make 3d cursor more of 3d gizmo or something,i saw also a new addon called Qblocker that lets you add new object based on orientation of another surface but didn’t test it yet.

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6

That was one of the goal to give 3D cursor an orientation.

You still can project 3D cursor to a surface.
You just have to use 3D Cursor from toolbar to have access to 3D Cursor orientation menu in Topbar.
Choose Geometry.
Just click on surface -> 3D cursor is placed and oriented.
Then, add an object. (There could be an option “align to 3D Cursor” like “align to view” but that means to control all “Add mesh” operators. Currently, there is none. Devs have other priorities.)
So, you have to go to Orientation menu in header of 3DView > Change it from Global to Cursor.
Then, you can go to Object menu > Transform > Align to Transform Orientation.
And it is finished.

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7

These is perfect solution. Thank you.

8

Thank you all for help, didn’t anticipated these ammount of answers for a simple thing :smiley: added align to transform orientation to quick menu and it’s just what I needed :slight_smile:

9

“Snap” is a basic tool – snap the cursor to a selected object, add something new, then snap that object to the cursor. Now, as you need to, move the new object, using the X,Y,Z keys to constrain the axes of movement. Easy peasy.

And … don’t forget that you can also hand-enter coordinates as numbers, or cut-and-paste!

Finally, Blender does offer a “grid” that you can easily turn on and off, and you can also snap items to that grid.

Zeauro’s trick of manipulating the coordinate-space selection is another cool trick that I just learned here-and-now! … :smiley:

10

Do you know where you saw this? I think this is a much needed feature, but I don’t recall any development plans for it.

11

it was talked about on the devtalk and developers portal , probably won’t be in the 2.80 initial release since it’s features locked but yeah it will make the 3d cursor more powerful.

12

That seems like a LOT of conditions. Do they all ‘stick’? I’m only batting about .500 in getting a new cube to align to the 3dc.

For one thing: the settings of the 3dc >tool< don’t seem to cross over to the “Shift+RightClick” methodology – the tool WILL inherit the orientation of a Face, but ShftRClick does not (although it does seem to put in some random rotation).

IMO, the settings for the 3dc as set in the TOOL toolbar should carry over to the ShftRClick method, which would be consistent with other Blender practices.

13

Active tools have by default an orientation set to default to copy generic orientation for tools called by shortcuts.
But their gizmo can use a different orientation than the generic one that is there since blender 2.48.

Orientation of 3D Cursor is new. 3D Cursor was a 2D pointer in 2.79 There was no pre-existing generic orientation setting for it.
And anyways, it will not be used by many operators to place 3D Cursor.

It is oriented according to the view to mimic visual aspect in 2.79.
IMO, that is a bad default that does not really make sense now that is a 3D thing.
You can change that behavior in settings of shortcut.

Go into User Preferences → Keymap > 3D View > 3D View (Global) > Set 3D Cursor.
Open the panel, change View to Transform.
Now, when you do a shift right click → 3D Cursor is oriented like orientation for other tools.
But that would not correspond to Geometry option that is making 3D Cursor copying orientation of surface he is projected on.

14

IMO that would be the optimal situation, and consistent within the Blender UI.

Vote up my proposal on SRC.