Learn/Drafting/Solid Modeling Tools
Move & Align
MUpdated v2.3.6At a glance
- Full move-and-rotate manipulator: X/Y/Z drag arrows plus rotation rings, in one session
- Angles are always absolute — type 0 on any axis and you're back to square
- Floating input at the handle shows the true value live; type an exact distance or angle
- Pickable pivot: re-anchor to a corner, edge midpoint, hole center, or face center
- Point-to-point moves with vertex / midpoint / center snapping
- Align Faces: pick two flat faces and the part rotates to mate them flush
- Optional move and angle increments snap every drag to clean steps
Move (M) translates and rotates solid bodies. Start it from the toolbar or search palette, or
right-click a body in the browser tree or the viewport. Every move commits as a real transform
feature in the history (Move 1, Move 2, …), so you can edit or reorder it later and
everything downstream rebuilds.
One manipulator, all six directions
Pick a body and a color-coded manipulator appears (X red, Y green, Z blue): drag arrows to move and rotation rings to spin about any axis — both in the same session, no mode switching. The manipulator keeps a constant on-screen size at any zoom, and grabbing a handle never jumps the value; it moves from wherever you grabbed it.
The dialog shows live Move X/Y/Z and Rotate X/Y/Z fields alongside the drag handles. All
of them are expression inputs — 1/2in, 12.7mm, and (5+3)/16 are all fair game.
Angles are always absolute. The Rotate fields show the true angle from zero no matter how you got there — drag a ring, type a number, drag again, and the values never turn into relative-to-last-gesture offsets. Enter 0 on an axis (or zero all three) and the part is back to exactly square. The rings act as a true gimbal: each ring drives exactly one of the three angles, geometrically.
Type it at the handle
Start dragging any arrow or ring and a small input box appears right next to it, tracking the live absolute value — the actual angle of that ring, or the total travel along that arrow. Keep dragging, or type the value you want and press Enter. Press Esc to dismiss.
Set Move Step and Angle Step in the dialog to snap drags to clean increments (say 0.25" and 15°); leave them at 0 for free dragging.
Pick your pivot
By default rotation happens about the body's center. Click Pick Datum to re-anchor the manipulator anywhere on the model:
- a corner (vertex),
- an edge midpoint — the rings align to the edge, so you can rotate about it like a hinge,
- an arc or hole center — rings align to the hole's axis,
- a face center — rings align to the face normal.
Re-anchoring never shifts the part — it only changes where rotation happens from. Reset Datum returns to the body center.
Point to point
Pick a From point and a To point — vertices, edge midpoints, hole centers, and face centers all snap — and the body translates so the two land exactly together. That's the precise way to stack parts before a boolean.
Pick two flat faces with Align Faces on and the body also rotates so the faces mate flush (facing each other), pivoting about the From point.
Rich assembly features — mates, joints, constraint-driven alignment — are planned but not implemented yet; today Move & Align is the way parts get placed relative to each other.