Hi Michael,

Is it possible to move or copy an object by certain distance from another object?
There is a nice feature in particular CAD application I miss a lot, when I want to move something by a distance for instance 10 from some other point, I go like this:

1. Select the object.
2. Start Move command and pick a point of reference on the selected object.
3. Hover the mouse over an edge or point of other object.
4. Type 10 and minus sign, selected object moves in that direction and it is 10 units away.

If I want to move the selected object on the other side of that point or the edge I type 10 and plus sign,

That's all.
Same for Copy.

I tried to type that in 'd' coordinate window, but it doesn't work.

Marek

Hi Marek,

You are not far of the solution...


1. Select the object.
- OK
2. Start Move command and pick a point of reference on the selected object.
- OK

But next, you have to
First type 10 in the d field and validate it before you move in the direction you want.

That all...

Have fun

I believe the OP also needs the direction of the move to be specifically constrained to a line going through *two* arbitrary points (one at the source location, and one at the target).
For that one needs to get used to the (very powerful) "temporary live guide" feature (or whatever it's called :D). To do so :

> Initiate Move
> Make sure that Object Snap is enabled (this can be done before or after the move is initiated)
> while Move is waiting for input, perform a left mouse button "click and drag" input, starting from the first point of reference, and ending at the second point of reference. This creates a reference line anchored to these two points.
> Click on your desired start point (likely one of the two that you defined the direction with)
> With the mouse hovering over the reference line and thus locking the direction of the move, type in the desired distance.

Hi Phiro,

No.
That's obvious.
Your way is just moving the selected object by typed distance towards the other object.
What I'm asking about is to move selected object to be the typed distance AWAY FROM THE OTHER OBJECT.

Minus moves that object in front of the picked point of the other object, plus makes it move away behind that picked point of the other object.

Marek

Here's a demo :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP-4EXZ-8Hw

The positive direction is defined by the vector starting at the first clicked point, and the mouse position in relation to it. From there, depending on these inputs, you might want to type +10 or -10 to move the object in the direction you want, away or closer to the other one.

In general MOI tends to behave as an hybrid of mouse-centric and key input-centric paradigms, requiring both at the same time when numerical precision is required (mouse for the direction, and kb for the input of values). Or, mouse-only for more improvised drafting. But AFAIK never keyboard-only.

What I want is to move the red rectangle to be 100 mm away from the other object.
In one move.
Your video is unclear to me.

Just explain your way to do that, please.

Why not use the Helper Lines ? ;)

Sorry i can't record! :(
Move
Select the red Rectangle Right Click
Make a vertical Helper Line on the black rectangle (on the right edge)
Click the little "trapezoid form" / Relocate Line
Type 100 (move on the right the Helper line it will blocked at 100 from the black rectangle Click

Pick Base Point (of the Red rectangle)
Move the red rectangle on the left to the Helper line for the target Point!

All that is made on one second! :)

They don't help here, they just determine the direction of movement, not the distance from the other object, in this case 100 mm.

No no look i have writed 100 ;)
So the Helper line will be at 100 on the right of the black rectangle
so the red rectangle will be also aligned at 100 when you move it horizontal on the helper line! :)
Make step by step that i have described above...
I am very desolated my record tool don't show the trapezoïd :(

@Pilou : well, one can't say "why don't you do x ?" to someone who's precisely asking how to do x ...
Edit : Ha, nevermind, I see you've added steps now.

@mk : Based on your initial description is seemed that you wanted to move an object along a specific direction, of a certain amount of units - which is done either by first drafting a regular line to help you with it, or, as described in the steps I outlined, by defining the desired vector and reference points using the click-and-drag helper lines.

But now it seems that you want to *place* and object at a certain distance to another. So for that, you need to either draft a line that will specify the desired distance ; or, use the realtime helper lines (and more particularly, the points defining them) to establish this distance. To do so, you need to :

> Initiate Move
> while move is in idle, click-and-drag from a point on your target object, and move the mouse in the direction the target point will be (in your case, horizontally)
> type in the desired distance. This will put a little dot at the target distance, and also an End reference point
> to be more safe, mark this end point by placing another helper line. Now it will be impossible to miss
> this is now your target point to snap to for the move

As shown here in two scenarios :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE_Vr7YquEE

Arguably it would be much clearer if the End points were actually shown on screen, as opposed to being hidden but snappable. If that was the case I would personally use this method much more often, but I must say that I always end up drafting an actual line, because relying on hidden dots is way too dangerous and caused me to incorrectly draft things too many times. Ideally both the typed-in distance as well as the end point should both show on screen. Perhaps there is a way to do that already, but I don't know how.

Looks like it's easier to use Move command 2 times, that's what usually do.
Just two clicks.
Move to touch the object, Enter, type the distance and voila.
I thought that it was possible here by just one click.

Outside of manually drafting lines (or circles) for reference that's personally what I tend to do, too.
Now I may very well be missing some functionality of the helper lines. As said I certainly wish they would carry more on-screen information (even temporarily), as that would make them immensely more useful and would in turn save quite a bit of drafting time.
There's a custom command making them more permanent, but without distances being shown it's only limited to directions and vertical/horizontal references really.
(By the way, there are a few more features under the little tag that appears when drafting helper lines, but I don't think there is anything about distances in there)

Another robust solution! :)

And yes helper lines are very under employed! :)

Hi Marek,

re:
> Looks like it's easier to use Move command 2 times, that's what usually do.
> Just two clicks.
> Move to touch the object, Enter, type the distance and voila.
> I thought that it was possible here by just one click.

It's probably easiest to do it with 2 moves like you are describing here.

You can do it within one run of the Move command by using construction lines though, there is a slight trick to that where you'll want to make the construction line first before you pick the first point of the Move command.

That's because once you have picked the first point in the Move command, that will become the "base point" which means any distance constraint will be anchored at that point.

So the sequence using a construction line goes like this:

Select the object you want to move and run the Transform > Move command.

Now before picking the point on the object that you want to position, type in your desired distance value and push Enter. That will set a pending distance constraint to be used with the next point pick that uses a base point.

Now Drag out a construction line off of the other object that you want to be positioned from, from your previous screenshot I think it's the midpoint of the other object?

The distance constraint will be applied to the Construction line making an "end" snap point available at your desired ending position so now you can pick the base point on your object and the target point on the construction line End snap point.

Here's what it looks like:



I'd probably just use Move twice though.

- Michael

My mind immediately went to an “R” constraint when i read his described method.

Do you think that works for his question?

Hi Burr, yes that's true you can use relative point entry for this too, typing in r100,0 (an x,y coordinate prefixed with the letter "r") instead of using distance constraint if you want.

You can use that on a second time with the Move command after having first placed the object to be moved onto the other object's reference point.

There is also a way you can use relative coordinates to do it in just one use of Move too. To do that type in r-100,0 (note negative x value for this particular case) before you pick the first point for the move, that will displace the actual picked base point to be 100 units to the left of your clicked base point.

That looks like this:


- Michael

Great. Thanks for making the video!

The second way was what i was thinking. Thanks for confirming it did what i thought. Have been away from my computer alot lately.

When I try to execute this procedure I get an error as attached:

Hi Marek,

re:
> When I try to execute this procedure I get an error as attached:

The relative point input needs a point coordinate, either an x,y value (which will use z=0) or an x,y,z value.

Also if your locale's number system uses the comma as the decimal separator then put it in as a space between the x and y coordinates instead of a comma between them.

So either r-5,0 or r-5 0 if you use commas as decimal separators.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Got it, finally!
The only way is to type in:

r-5 0

As both r-5 and r-5,0 return error.

This adds another functionality of sophisticated apps which cost at least 10 times more than MoI.

Thank you,
Marek