Making measurements while copy/pasting

[atdNMH7S]

I'm a little stuck while copy/pasting a series of holes from a panel in one design document to a blank panel I've sketched in a new Fusion 360 file.

In the source document, I copied the series of holes, then opened the new document and hit Cmd-V to paste them. See the attached screenshot for how they look at this point. The panel they're supposed to go on is the gray rectangle at the upper right. Because the panels in the source and destination documents were sketched at different XY positions, the series of holes needs to be moved.

It's clear that I can click-hold and drag either of the two arrows to move the selection in the X and/or Y directions. However, the numeric measurement at the bottom ("0.00 in") isn't meaningful because it shows the position relative to where the selection was pasted in, which for my purposes is an arbitrary position.

What I want to do instead is take a measurement of, say, the distance between the center of one of the small round holes and the horizontal edge at the bottom of the sketched panel, and watch how this number changes as I move the selection. I've been clicking in various ways to try to make this measurement, but it's not having the intended effect. Could anyone help me with the series of Mac keypresses/mouseclicks to do this? Thanks in advance.

[jhackney1972]

You should have the ability, when pasting, to "Set Pivot" in the Move/Copy dialog box.  This will allow you to select any vertex or feature point and then enter your dimensions from it.  Just remember, you select the Set Pivot, select your point, and then come back and de-select it.

[atdNMH7S]

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't seem to have the hang of how to implement it, however.

I'm unclear on when in the sequence of copy-paste commands I would be using Set Pivot in the Move/Copy dialog box. I can copy the selection from the source design document successfully as described in my original post above. However, when I then move to the destination design document, I've tried using Set Pivot and executing the paste command in different orders, but none is producing the desired result of allowing me to paste in and move the selection.

Could you say anything more about when in the sequence Set Pivot is set? Also, when you say I should come back and de-select it, does that mean simply to click somewhere else, or is the de-selection something I do within the Move/Copy dialog? And finally, once the pivot is set and I'm able to move the position of the selection that has been pasted-in, what distance is being measured/reported in relation to the pivot point? I.e. the pivot point's distance from what? Thanks again for the help.

[davebYYPCU]

You need to also copy an article, common to both sketches, say left hand edge of the original plate.  When pasting, select the lower left point of the new line as anchoring point.  Paste to lower left corner of new plate.  Surplus line can be removed.

Might help.....

[etfrench]

I usually prefer using the Point to Point option instead of the Pivot Point. 

A better, more precise, workflow would be to use dimensions to locate the geometry. 

[jhackney1972 · Accepted solution]

My Screencast will explain what I meant by "Set Pivot" in the Move/Copy dialog box.

[atdNMH7S]

Many thanks for all the posts. The screencast by jhackney1972 was particularly helpful.

This enabled me to work out the steps to complete the copy/paste and move of the series of holes. I was going to list my steps at the bottom of this message in case it might be helpful to anyone else, but the forum software isn't letting me paste in the text (which amounts to 14 lines).

Also, I have a new problem. Although all of the selected holes appeared to copy successfully to the new design document, some of them are not extruding properly. I don't think this is directly related to the way the copy/paste was done, so I'll post a new topic on that issue.

Thanks again to all for the help.