Sorry to sound stupid if this has been asked dozens of times before, but how do you take an object that is not centered at the origin and make sure that it is centered? I've tried to select an item and then type in coordinates of 0,0,0 but that doesn't seem to move it at all.

Hi Brian, is there an easy way for you to grab the center point of the object?

If so they you can just drag that point to the origin to snap it there.

Sometimes this point may be the midpoint between 2 snappable points on the object. If that is the case, you can use the Transform/Move command and drag out a construction line before picking the first point, then you can use the midpoint snap on the construction line to get the point halfway between the 2 snappable points for the first point of Move, and click the origin for the second point.

If the center point of your object is not easily snappable at all, then you can use a few applications of Transform/Align command, alternate between the "Horiz center" and "Vert center" options. Let me know if you need any help with this one.

I do want to add a type of properties panel for objects in the future that would allow you to edit its location in an easier way.

- Michael

Maybe its another candidate for the future 'Orientation Tools' ? :-) http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1394.2

Hi Nick - maybe... But those orientation tools will probably focus on mating specific snap points between objects. If the "center" of the object is not easily snappable, it probably won't naturally fit within those tools.

But another thing that I want to add in is a properties panel that gives some basic information about an object, and some information there about the dimensions of the object's bounding box and center of the bounding box could be listed in there as well as editable information.

- Michael

Hi Michael. It seems you could place a "bounding box" function within the Box command, and not lose much UI space. There could be a BBox option within the Box dialog. Having a physical bounding box object can be really handy, especially once you add dimensioning tools in later versions. I very often create bounding boxes in "modeler R" so i can quickly check measurements, resize objects, and draw dimensions. Sometimes it's the only way to find the extents of an irregular shape... If a BBox can be created, then the area centroid can be found by drawing a diagonal line from one corner of the box to the opposite corner. Midpoint of that line is the centroid. Then any object could be easily recentered at zero from the midpoint of that line...

jonah

Hi Jonah - that would definitely be good from a UI space standpoint, but that set of "draw" tools are focused on drawing an object from scratch, not really on processing a selected object.

I was thinking that a "create bounding box" type function might fit in best as some kind of option right in the bounding box properties panel instead...

One nice thing about having the bounding box as an editable object property is that it should remove the need for creating the box as a separate object for some of the things you were describing, like quickly checking measurements and resizing objects.

- Michael

that's true. i guess if it were described through the object properties, then it also has the advantage of being dynamically linked to the object. In that case, would this also be applicable to have bounding box for groups and/or selection sets? Very often we need BBoxes for those too...

jonah

Hi Jonah, yeah I think that if you had multiple selected objects, it would work on the combined bounding box for the whole set.

- Michael

Michael,

Thanks for the help. I understand both methods you recommended and they work well on individual objects but it seems near impossible to center what could be considered a group of several separate objects.

Hi Brian, for centering a group of several objects, select them all, then run the Transform/Move command.

Pick the first point at your best guess of where the center of your group is at. If you have a hard time judging the proportions, you may want to draw a rectangle to frame your group first, then you can snap on to the center of that rectangle.

Then on the second point of the Move command, pick on the origin.

That should do it.

If you're having difficulty with a particular group of objects, can you please post the model file here? That will help me give you more specific step-by-step instructions.

- Michael

This isn't the best example...but I've been using construction lines to locate the center of a group of 2D objects...it's not a perfect method, but it sort of gets me closer to what I need to do. For 3D objects that aren't in a symmetrical grouping, I agree it would be more difficult.

-Jesse

Micheal and Jesse,

Good suggestions.

Thanks,

Brian