By Martin Phelps
Access the “Align” tool as described in my previous blog - see the following link.
Example 1.- To Align the Top Edge of the Magenta Rectangle with the Base of the Red Pentagon, as shown in Figure 1.
Activate the “Align” command, select all the objects that require “Alignment”. In this case it’s just the rectangle, confirm by pressing enter or right click and select “Enter” from the menu.
Define the “First Alignment Source Point” by selecting the lower top corner of the rectangle. The command then expects the “First Destination Point” which will be the lower corner of the “Polygon”. An orange dashed line appears between the points, which after the destination point is picked will turn black as shown in Figure 2.
The process now must be repeated, to define the “Second Source and Destination Points” as shown in Figure 3.
The command now requires a “third Source and Destination points”. This is used in the case of aligning 3D objects, since these are 2D items, simply press enter to ignore the “Third points” option.
The user now has the option to “Scale the Selected Objects Based on the Alignment Points”, use the default which is “No” by pressing enter, the result is shown in Figure 4.
Example 2.- To Align the Top Edge of the Magenta Rectangle with the Base of the Red Pentagon by placing the rectangle centrally about the base of the Polygon.
The process is basically the same except the First Source Point is the mid-point of the top edge of the rectangle and the first destination point is the midpoint of the base of the polygon as shown in Figure 5.
The second Source and destination points can be the same as the previous example, again there is no need to specify “Third Source and Destination Points”, and by using the default option of “No” to the “Scaling” option the result is shown in Figure 6.
Instead of using the default option “No” to the “Scaling”, using the “Yes” option will result in the selected object or objects being scaled in relation to “Source and Destination Points” as shown in Figure 7.