I have a shape. I rotated this shape. Then i want to align a face of my shape to the workplane. Is there a function to do this task?
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19 comments
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Christian Official comment Unfortunately there is not a feature to align a face to the workplane or another object.
A workaround may be to group it with the top of a cube that is a hole to cut a slice off at the bottom, making it flat to the ground again.
Also, some slicers have some methods for laying a face flat on the print bed, if you might be trying to print this design.
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Tinkercad Support At the moment, no - but I know the team is aware of that as a request and it's on the list. If you need to orient the face for 3D printing, MeshMixer has a tool for that.
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antonioviola83 Thanks for your reply and for your tip. ;-)
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John Mcnerney Any idea when that align to workplane function will be added? I'm working with some elementary school kids who are using TinkerCad to design for 3D printing. It's fairly common for them to accidentally rotate something - or intentionally rotate it, but not my the correct amount. Getting it oriented for printing can be a real problem for them. We've already got a bottleneck at the 3D printer. Loading a file starting a print, then finding it isn't printing correctly just makes the bottleneck worse. Teaching these kids two programs at this point is not in the cards. The school is more likely to just switch design programs to one with this functionality.
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Guillermo Melantoni Regardless on when we add a better way for aligning, you should be able to align your models to the print tray in most of the applications that communicate with a 3D printer. This is a basic setting before printing. What's more, positioning a model in a print tray is a fundamental part of the success of a 3d print. The part may be aligned to the plane, but have overhangs that would require a different orientation, or the part requires a different position on the tray in order to leverage the mechanical properties of printed plastic (the part will be stronger on one direction and really easily breakable on the other one).
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Rejutka Just to add: this is useful for more than just printing - I have recently redone a project (wasn't much, fortunately) because I found out (late) that a part was misaligned by a few degrees - skewing everything that built upon it.
It would be nice if there was a way to check if an object is aligned to the workplane - the rotation tool unfortunately "forgets" the angle after you use it.
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Baron Arnold Happy birthday Feature Request!
But seriously, I came here in 2018 looking for an answer for this. I have rotated something. I just want to make it flat again.
Eyeballing is the only way? Is this implemented and I just can't find it?
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James Hassinger seems this feature has been requested for 4 years. Any chance you can add that soon? Just spent a good amount of time aligning many objects only to find out the first object is some fraction of a degree off the workplane on one side. Keep trying to fix it, not working. I have to start over.
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John Mcnerney The lack of this feature is one of the main reasons I now minimize the use of tinker cad in the school where I’ve been volunteering to assist with 3-D printing and design. Too many kids were either intentionally or accidentally rotating their designs, and were unable to get them to lay flat again when they were done.
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jjutemp jjutemp ARGHHH.. Hulk gets mad! This missing feature should be added ASAP.
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pympuf pympuf It's a pity that it is still missing...
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genericderek123 genericderek123 I feel really stupid complaining about something that's free but this is seriously a really dumb problem to have for half a decade lmao what are you guys even doing?
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Zalkhalifh Zalkhalifh This problem can be solved using the slicer. In my case, I use Ultimaker cura for slicing the designs, there's feature called Snap Flat which will fix the problem on one click.
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asmendoza asmendoza I found a solution to this problem!
1. Copy the object.
2. Then, delete the object.
3. Click on the workplane or set your workplane.
4. Then press "Cntrl" + "V"(for PC) or "command" + "V"(for mac). This action is basically pasting what you initially copied and deleted.
This time, your object should magically reappear on the correct plane. LOL
Hope this helps!
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John Mcnerney Zalkhalifh - the solution of fixing it in the slicer does not help with the problem when a student rotates his object off the plane, but then want to further modify his project and would like to return it to it's original orientation. I volunteer with elementary students, and they are regularly accidentally rotating their object (or sometimes intentionally rotating it).
asmendoza - Your solution does not work. It will adjust the z-axis position of the object so that it is just touching the work plane. It does not adjust the rotation. I would be upset if it did, because when I copy and paste an object, I do not want the rotation changed every time I paste it.
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John Mcnerney asmendoza - what you describe - lowering or raisin an object to just touch the surface of the workplane - can be more easily accomplished by simply selecting the object and pressing "D" (to "Drop" the object onto the workplane).
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asmendoza asmendoza Hi John, I tried the "D". You are right, it will just touch the lowest point of the object to the surface of the plane. What I forgot to include in the copy and paste method to put objects back to plane is, before copying and deleting, you should click on one side/surface of the object first and set it as the plane. After doing so, copy it, then delete. Once deleted, set the plane back to the original plane. Now, you can paste your object back and should be on the flat plane. Works everytime for me. Let me know if this does not work for you. Thanks
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william bennett hankins There is a way to do this, bit with a few extra steps. It's still quite simple.
What you can do is if you want to align your shape to a custom workplane, the you can lay to shape flat on the baseplane, copy it, then place your new plane. After that, simply paste the shape and is will be flat against the new plane in the same way that it was with the original plane -
John Mcnerney William bennett hankins - THANK YOU!
I just placed a cylinder on the baseplane, rotated it so it was no longer sitting flat on the end of the cylinder. I then
1) set a custom workplane on the face of the cylinder I wanted to lay flat
2) copied the object while that custom workplane was active.
3) reset to the baseplane
4) pasted the object
It pasted with the face I had selected laying flat on the baseplane.It worked perfectly! I wish I had known this trick a couple of years ago.
Now, if it's that simple to do, why can't they implement an automated way to do this? Put a custom workplane on he face of an object and hit "F" (for "flat) and it lays that face of the object flat on baseplane, (kind of like selecting an object and pressing "D" causes it to drop until it touches the baseplane)
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