Orienting Shapes
By default, when you draw a shape over another shape, the new shape takes the same orientation as the old. So, for example, the circle in Figure 3.8 is drawn by SketchUp to align with the rectangle that’s already there.
FIGURE 3.8 A circle aligned with a rectangle.
However, you can set the orientation yourself, defeating SketchUp’s default orientations. To do that, draw a figure away from any other figure, using the orientation you want, such as creating a horizontal circle. While creating the new figure, press and hold the Shift key. Then draw the figure you want on the surface you want and the figure will retain the orientation of the figure you drew while you started to hold down the Shift key.
In this way, you can orient figures as you want them, despite the orientation of the underlying shape, as shown in Figure 3.9, where we’ve drawn a horizontal circle over the vertical rectangle (we drew the horizontal circle at right to show SketchUp the orientation we want, and held the Shift key down as we drew that first horizontal circle to hold the orientation for the second horizontal circle, drawn over the vertical rectangle).
FIGURE 3.9 A new circle with a custom alignment.
Thanks :
Steven Holzner,
SamsTeachYourself Google SketchUp 8 in 10 Minutes
