Snapping a few irregular faces to the 3D cursor

Hi,
How can I snap the selected faces to the 3D cursor only using one plane. I can do it by creating additional edges on the shape above to get an extra vertex but is it possible to do this using only the 3D cursor ?

Yes. Use the coordinates on 3d view properties to get the 3d cursor positioned at the right level, and appropriate pivot depending on which element(s) should align to the cursor when snapping with offset.

Thanks for the quick reply! I am not sure I understood you correctly. When I am using the Snap Selection to Cursor (offset) option then the whole selection is snapped to the 3D cursor (which is partially ok) but how can I keep it at the XY plane at the same time?

There isn’t a way to do this directly to the cursor that I know of.

Here is a workaround using a secret command in the snapping function to snap to the center of the top box without adding geometry:

First set your snap target to active:
image

Then make sure the point you want to snap to the center of that plane is active:

Then grab those faces, press shift+z to constrain to the XY plane and press ctrl to enable snapping. hover over one corner until you see the circle indicating you are snapping:

Then release ctrl without moving your cursor and press A. this will ‘accumulate’ a snap point. Now when you press ctrl again and hover over another point, it will average between that new point, and the old one (now highlighted with a redder circle:

once you click, the active vertex will be right between the two corners of the box on the XY plane, and the Z value will be unchanged.

The accumulate snap points can be used for a lot of weird tricks, and there is no limit to the amount that you can add. They are much less awkward to deal with if you turn snapping on, instead of jumping on and off of ctrl (alternately, you can remap that shortcut to ctrl+a).

Say you want to put something in the middle of a 3d scanned tree, you can keep tapping A to select an approximate ring of verts and it will snap to the center of those accumulated points.

Or if you want to place objects evenly along an edge, you can stack those points to create a weighted average. If you press A twice over one point, and then click a different point, the object you are placing will be 1/3 of the way from the first point and 2/3 of the way fromt the second.

It’s my favorite poorly documented feature.


start

level

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It might be interesting, if you have deliberately limited the axis of motion (To Normal Z for instance for a single extruded face) to allow the snap to cursor to work over any remaining axis.

It works! Thanks for this solution!

I found two additional solutions.

  1. Use the Modify Pivot add-on ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrYGXg5HjMA )
  2. Create an Empty object which you can place/snap anywhere and then snap to it any object or selection.

But your solution is the fastest one.