can someone please explain the way x,y,& z work in this program

[fredi]

I cannot get any consistency with the axis. I can draw a box from a new drawing and it doesn't matter which plane I pick to start from direction the height that the program uses does not match the z axis. Yes I have z up but it doesn't matter. I can make a box then try and move it in the z axis per the dialog box and it doesn't go in the z direction. and forget about the axis matching the colors! If I spend lots of time manipulating the box and resetting the cube top and front I can finally get the box in the correct orientation. what is going on? this should not be this hard. you guys make autocad.

[jakefowler]

Hi @fredi

Many thanks for the post. Ret assured, this isn't the first time that the mismatch between the world axes labelling and Move command axes labelling has caused confusion 🙂 

The basic logic is: if you use the Move command and pick an object in the canvas, we use the face you picked as reference for the manipulator axis directions. In most cases, this will be based on the normal direction of the face you picked: 'Y' will be normal to the selected face, and 'X' & 'Z' will be orthogonal to that. There are some special cases (e.g. picking a cylindrical face will align the manipiulator with the centreline of that cylinder, with 'Y' being the centreline direction).

So the directions of these axes will be purely based on the selected face; they won't necessarily correspond to world space.

If you wish to move an object and keep the X/Y/Z axes aligned to world space, the easiest way to do this is to pick the object from the browser rather than the canvas:

If you to do this, we default to aligning the manipulator with the world* coordinate system. This should give you the behaviour you are looking for.

(*This is assuming you're not yet working with components & subcomponents. When you start creating Components: each Component has its own coordinate space, and transforming a component will transform its coordinate space. So if you transform a component, any objects within that component will align to the parent component's coordinate space, not world space)

There's also a 'Set Pivot' option inside the Move command, once you've picked an object to move. If you click this, you can pick any point to reorient/relocate the axes. If you pick the world Origin point from the browser, then click the tick icon to complete the Set Pivot, this should also align your manipulator to the world axis directions.

Does this help clarify the behaviour? If there's still any confusion, please do let us know.

Thanks,

Jake

[PhilProcarioJr]

@jakefowler

Something I don't understand, why not add a check box to the move tool that allows the changing to and from world space in the tool? That would solve all the confusion, I mean how would someone have known to select the object in the browser to get world space coordinates?

Although you have done a great job explaining it here this post will be lost in a few weeks and the next person that runs into this will be frustrated and so on....

Ideally It would be nice if there was a selection box that switched between world space, tangent to face and the current default method.

[fredi]

thanks for the responses, I can't wait to give them a try.

[jakefowler]

@PhilProcarioJr - that's a very fair point. It's already on our list to improve the UI for the Move (and Align) tools, as there's a number of enhancements we'd like to make here - I'll be sure this gets attention as part of that work.

Thanks,

Jake