I am having an issue with snapping with ctrl. It seems to snap to percents (or more, multipliers like 0.6, 1.2, 2.4, etc) and not the grid/units when scaling. It’s causing me major problems because I am trying to make a Mayanish pyramid and the steps get smaller as they go up.
Blender only snaps to grid units when you are grabbing something. If you want you make something bigger, and still line up with grid units, you’ll have to move the vertices to the lines.
You can also just hold shift while scaling, and that should allow you enough fine-tuning to just eyeball it so it lines up. It’s a little sloppy, but who will notice?
At the top under user preferances - snap to grid settings grab/move | rotate | scale . pick scale you will now snap to grid when scaling .
EDIT - you might already have it turned on if your snap to grid is irratic - if so don’t use ctrl when scaleing it does it automatically .
Ok, well, I am used to having things exact, and from experience, it’s worth having it perfect because adding details gets hard otherwise.
Also the thing in perferences just makes ctrl+click the default for click (ctrl+click then being the unsnapped), helpful but not to my situation.
But it seems NOTHING snaps to the real grid, just relative. I tried using paths for it like in http://www.blendernation.com/tutorials/blender-beginner-tutorial-a-pawn-in-a-hurry/ but I can’t get the end points to line up with the grid (or anything else, for that matter) they just move as modifiers of where they are, snapping to their “own grid”… I know I can input the position with N, but that’s a lot of extra work (why are those fields not edit boxes??? Double clicking doesn’t seem to always work and shift-click makes me take my hand off the number keys, mainly since I tend to be zeroing out things… it seems very badly thought out).
Surly there MUST be a way to do CAD-like precision, I don’t know how anyone could model anything architectural without being able to snap to absolute values.
EDIT: I just realized on N you have to click the number for it to go into the edit box mode. That somewhat improves it, but it’d be nice to work without having to input the numbers.
I guess I’m not understanding your problem .
QUOTE:“Also the thing in perferences just makes ctrl+click the default for click (ctrl+click then being the unsnapped), helpful but not to my situation.”- do you mean by click pressing the S hotkey for scale ?
You might be zoomed in too close to snap to whole numbers by just snaping . Just zoom out until you don’t see subdivision units from the standard Blender unit . The standerd Blender default cube is 2x2x2 Blender units in size .
Once you are zoomed out enough and if you have your snap to grid preferances all turned on you should only snap to whole numbers when you grab a selection - rotate/scale will still snap to 0.1 units regardless - unfortunately both are relative actions for i guess for what you want- but there is a simple solution once you have zoomed out to whole number units : Shift-S and select “selection to grid” and your selection will snap to the grid in whole numbers . So lets say that you have the base of the pyramid as a simple square plane - zoom out, select the entire plain if in Edit MOde and scale it to the size you want ( BTW you can see the transformation numbers on the bottom left corner of the 3D window so you don’t have to do it “blind”) - it doesnt have to be exact - then you press Shift+S and select the first option from the menu : "Selection -> Grid " and your plane will have snapped to the nearest whole number unit . This works for vertices and edges as well . Just remember to zoom out far enough that you see only whole number subdivisions on the grid .
Also when grabing a seection you can limit the axis on which to appy the transformation by hitting G then teh X Y or Z keys for the respective axis you want .
And BTW I’m assuming you are doing all this in either the top, front or side views - the Cntrl + S,R or G or the user pref. settings work in user viws but the grid is not really available as visual aid (Shift+S also works too)
I hope this helps because I don’t understand what a tutorial about making a chess pawn has anything to do with modelling a Mayan pyramid (though the tutorial also covers the Shift+S hot key) nor does paths have anything to do with snapping to the grid .
Shift-S and select “selection to grid” and your selection will snap to the grid in whole numbers . So lets say that you have the base of the pyramid as a simple square plane - zoom out, select the entire plain if in Edit MOde and scale it to the size you want ( BTW you can see the transformation numbers on the bottom left corner of the 3D window so you don’t have to do it “blind”) - it doesnt have to be exact - then you press Shift+S and select the first option from the menu : "Selection -> Grid " and your plane will have snapped to the nearest whole number unit . This works for vertices and edges as well . Just remember to zoom out far enough that you see only whole number subdivisions on the grid .
Ahh, that helped. Is there any way I could make all snaps do that automatically? Not needed but it could be nice.
I hope this helps because I don’t understand what a tutorial about making a chess pawn has anything to do with modelling a Mayan pyramid (though the tutorial also covers the Shift+S hot key) nor does paths have anything to do with snapping to the grid .
Well, I was having issues with extrusion and scaling so I thought using a path of “steps” and then using a 4-sided spin may work better (I considered an array but couldn’t get the booleans to work the way I needed). I must have missed the shift+s in there (or didn’t realize it could have that use, I knew it could snap the cursor but didn’t realize it could snap other things…)
Anyway, I think my issue is solved now. Thanks a lot! 