General Category > Ongoing Anim8or Development

Initial CAD-style feature

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Steve:
Build 1075 introduces the initial step towards adding a few CAD-style feature to Anim8or. To enable it click on the new button in the top toolbar that looks like a little ruler, or type Ctrl-D. Then select a single item. Anim8or will show the minimum and maximum coordinates,horizontally and vertically, relative to that view.

Note: this only displays in non-perspective views, and is limited to the Object editor for now.

The next part I have planned is to add alignment tools.  You'll be able to click on the horizontal and vertical edges of the window to set "sticky" plains. When you move an item so that it's bottom, axis, or top is close to a plain it will align exactly, similar to how Align To Grid works.  Moving spline points, points in the point editor, etc. will do something similar.

There are a lot of other things that Anim8or could potentially do.  Feel free to post you feedback :)

Raxx:
This is quite interesting, Steve. The dimensions display works well :)

I've got some kind of related feedback. Forever now, Grid Snap hasn't been Grid Snap. Rather, it's just snapping to intervals offset from its original position. I think it'd be more useful if Grid Snap actually snapped elements to the grid positions instead.

What do you think about having orthographic view-specific guides? Similar to photoshop, gimp, inkscape, etc, where you can click and drag guides from the edges of the workspace, and then have a snap-to-guide option as well. Perhaps hold shift while dragging to snap the guides to 1-unit intervals. Combine this with rulers on the left and top to show the units, and it'll provide a ton of precision to the tool set.

thecolclough:

--- Quote from: Raxx on March 26, 2014, 12:54:59 am ---Forever now, Grid Snap hasn't been Grid Snap. Rather, it's just snapping to intervals offset from its original position. I think it'd be more useful if Grid Snap actually snapped elements to the grid positions instead.
--- End quote ---

could i amend the suggestion to 'as well as', rather than 'instead'?  i sometimes use the 'Grid Snap' control to make a very specific length of movement (usually for fine-tuning details of a model), so it does have its uses!

argee:
Really liking this new CAD feature!

Are you thinking of adding the ability to edit the numbers that appear?  In-place would be nice, but even edit boxes at the bottom of the screen (like a lot of CAD programs) would be OK with some kind of indication of which number is in edit mode.

Thanks!

Raxx:
thecolclough, if I may make a counter argument...

What you're describing is not grid snap, but rather just a move operation with defined values. For that, there are already tools to move things specific lengths.

You have:

* Double-click an element and type in a value
* If moving multiple points or edges, go to Edit->Move Points
Whereas there's no option for true snap-to-grid. If multiple elements are selected, it should snap each element to the closest grid location while being moved.

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