On Tuesday, July 2, 2013 5:11:39 PM UTC-4, SonomaProducts.com wrote:


Moving in 3D on a 2D screen has always been a difficult thing to emulate in any 3D CAD system (Ia m in the business and I know).


For Sketchup, I have found that to move you have to pick an exact point on the object you want to move and move it to another exact point on another object. You do this by picking on a corner and then again a corner.

Sure, and that's exactly what I do. In this case I chose one of the inner corners of the dado and the point at the mating edge of the shelf. And that works perfectly when the mating parts are already pretty close together. The program "gets" what I'm trying to do without much rigamarole.

But when I have to move a piece, say, to the other end of a 5' shelf, the problems start. There are only two dimensions on the screen, but the object can move left and right, up and down and fore and aft. All too frequently, I want it to move right, and it moves aft instead, to pick an arbitrary example. So I reposition the "view" and try again. I frequently need to do this several times, hoping to get the part a little closer to where it's supposed to go with each step.