From the course: Learning Rhino 6 for Mac

Moving objects with drag, move, and gumball - Rhino Tutorial

From the course: Learning Rhino 6 for Mac

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Moving objects with drag, move, and gumball

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- [Instructor] Let's talk about a fundamental modeling skill you'll need for just about any job in Rhino for Mac, and that is the ability to move objects around in Rhino 3D space. Now, we've got a few different options for how we can move things, we can simply click and drag in the viewport, we can use the Move command or we can use the gumball tool, and they all pretty much accomplish the same thing each in just a slightly different way. So let's get moving with the exercise file transform-move.3dm. And here I've just got a few simple shapes for us to practice with. Now, the simplest way to move an object in Rhino is to click and drag, and this is also the least precise way of doing something. A lot of times that's just fine, we don't always need to have the highest precision. So I can just click and drag on any object to move it around or I could Shift + Select multiple objects, and just click and drag to move them. We can do this from any of the viewports. So depending on which viewport we're in, our movements will be constrained to one of the default construction planes. So notice when I click and drag in perspective, I'm moving along the x, y or the top construction plane, and this is the same construction that's in the top viewport. So those should look the same in both top and perspective. Similarly, when I move in the front viewport, I'm moving in the x, zero, the front construction plane. And then on the right viewport, I'm moving in the y, z or the right construction plane. So with click and drag, we're moving in at most two directions at once. Now, I can modify the direction by using what's called elevator mode. And to do that, we just hold the Command key and click and drag. So let's try that in perspective. So I'm holding down Command, and just clicking and dragging. So notice now instead of moving along the top construction plane, I'm actually moving up-and-down, and that's kind of why it's called elevator mode. Basically, elevator mode lets us move in the direction that's perpendicular to the construction plane of whichever viewport we're in. So I could do that from the front or also from the right. Now, I'd like to get these objects lined back up, I'm just going to hit Command + Z a few times till we're back. Now, sometimes when we're modeling Rhino, we need to make much more precise movements. And for that, we can use the Move command, which we can find under the transform menu. I'll go ahead and click to activate that. So move is great, since we can use it in combination with object snaps, or by typing precise numbers into the command prompts. So for example, let's say I'd like to place my cone right on the very top of my sphere. Now, if I was trying to do that with click and drag, it would be really hard. So if I was trying to sort of line this up, I'd have to go through multiple viewports. And even then it might not line up as precisely as I need it to. So let's try to do this with the Move command. So you can see in the command prompt I being asked to select the objects to move, so I'd like to move my cone. And while I'm at it, I'd also want to make sure that the end and center object snaps are active. And I'll go ahead and uncheck any others, that looks good. So just want to move my cone I'll go ahead and click Done. And then I'll pick the point to move from, and this could be any point. Now, in this case, since I'd like the cone to be exactly on the tip-top of that sphere, I'll pick the center point of the cones base for the point to move from. And since I have object snaps on, I should be able to snap right to it. So I can just mouse over anywhere along the perimeter of that cones base, and click to set the center point as the point to move from. Now, I need to set the point to move to, and I'll zoom in a little bit here so you can see more closely. And what that end object snap is letting me do is snap to the end of one of the ISO curves of the sphere. So I'm getting exactly geometrically, mathematically, precisely on the tip-top of that sphere. So there you go, perfect alignment using the Move command and the object snaps together. Now, let's say I wanted to do a movement, a certain distance. So let's try move again with these other two shapes, so I'll Shift + Click to select. Hit Space bar to bring up move again. And I want to move these 10.25 units over to the right. So again, I need to pick a point to move from. This can really be anywhere, it doesn't have to be on the object so I can just click anywhere in the viewport. Now, rather than picking a point from any of the viewports, I'll just type in 10.25. So here I'm telling Rhino, I want to move 10.25 units. I'll hit Return to enter that number. And now, you can see I'm actually getting this sort of a radius. And all I need to do is pick one last point to specify the direction so I can move them diagonally 10.25 units, in this case, I want to move down that x-axis. So I'll go ahead and toggle on Ortho and make sure I can snap it exactly 10.25 units. So lastly, we have a tool for moving objects that's a bit like a combination of the click and drag and the Move command, and that's called the gumball. So we can toggle the gumball on above our viewports. And so now, anytime I have a selection, there's this set of handles, and that's my gumball. Now, the gumball lets you do lots of different edits. So things like scaling, rotating, copying, and of course moving. But for now we'll just focus on these handles with the arrows. So the green, red and blue arrows, let us move objects around. So I can click and drag on any of them and move in the x, y and z directions. And that gives me a behavior, pretty much the same as the click and drag that we covered at the beginning of this video. Now, here's where the gumball gets pretty cool. If I wanted to do a more precise move, I can just single click on any of those direction handles, and I can type in a distance. So let's say I want to move negative three units, I can just type that in, hit Enter, and you can see I get that movement. Really nice to know that you got a few different options for moving things around in Rhino. Once you get familiar with all of them. You'll be a whiz at basic modeling.

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