How do I (automatically) center Decals on a face?

[Anonymous]

I'm not working with decals a lot, so excuse my ignorance.

I have a couple of square faces and square PNG images. I want to place these PNGs as decals on the faces with "perfect" alignment, i.e. the center of the PNG should be the center of the face.

Now, when I select "Decal" from the menu, I can select a face by clicking it, and the the PNG as bitmap. However, it appears centered on my "click-point" and not centered on the face. I can, of course, move it with the mouse, but that is not accurate (and it's tedious as well). The dialog shows me "X/Y/Z" offset values, but if I set them to "0/0/0" they are not centered to the face or relative to any obvious point on the face.

How should I do this?

Decal appears at 0/0/0 where I clicked (close to front-most corner). I want it "dead center" on the face.

[blaisebarrette]

Attached canvas do appear centred but unfortunately, Decal doesn't.  😞

This should be added to the idea station I believe!

[lucasproko · Accepted solution]

Hey @Anonymous,

@blaisebarrette is correct that there are no snap points for decals which makes it impossible to perfectly center them. The best workaround I can think of would be to create a sketch on the face you're placing the decal and place a point on the exact location you want the center of the decal to be placed. When you invoke the decal operation, click on the center of that point when you select the face and the decal will be placed closely to where you want it.

Obviously this process isn't perfect, and if you have suggestions for how we can improve this, please either vote for these Idea Station requests, or create your own:

Decal Improvements

Improve decal positioning (allow decal center to be out of edge)

Decal Mapping

As you can see, none of these have gathered significant support so we are not currently working on decal enhancements, but if we see an uptick in requests, we will take that into account during our next prioritization meeting.

Thanks,

[kaneR67JH]

Hi, has there been any changes to this feature or a new addition as it has been 5 years since this post and I still can't centre a decal onto a face (as far as I can tell). Thanks! 😄

[allister_mcrae]

I'm also going to bump this. I don't use it often. But anytime I DO use a decal, this is an issue.

A canvas snaps centered and full size to any face. Is the code that difficult to port over to decals?

Thanks for all the great work everyone!

[ralphKQ7LB]

I have the same issue. I don't see why a canvas can snap and why a decal can't.

The other weird issue I have is that dragging the decal it only starts moving from 20/-20mm and up, anything below it will not move. Also when I set the numbers manually in the window that comes up, it just won't respond to anything below those numbers. Feels like a bug to me.

[sutherland-]

I would have to agree that the option of Decal alignment relative to the face would be a great improvement instead of trying to adjust it by "eyeballing".