I have been struggling with snaps for ages so I thought I would post here. I can grab my ucs stick and move things along the x,y, or z just fine. I can grab the box of the ucs icon and move things freely. The problem I am having is when I turn my snap on, enable my constraints, grab the ucs, the constraint sometimes work and sometimes doesn’t. I fight with this all the time. Am I doing something wrong? Does this make sense?
what helps is locking the selection with the space bar, then the snap finds the right object…
Are you using the gizmo to switch your constraints? You might try F5, F6, F7 and F8 which by default represent the X, Y, Z and Plane(XY, YZ, ZX) constraints respectively.
Snaps
If nobody else is fighting this then Imust still be missing something. Here is my screen
http://www.whitebirchstudios.com/public\_share/snaps/snaps.htm
Hold down your shift key.
in the snap settings have you checked “use axis constraints”?
Thanks Jacob,
I see what he/she is doing, but the issue is when I pick the x it’ll turn to the y by itself. I’ll try playing with the 2d snap, but it usually happens when I am in perspective. I’ll try the shift as well. This has to cost me hours a week.
To help with the axis switching issue you can also try with these tips:
1. try with different points of view (move, roll, orbit)
2. reduce gizmo size
Snap
Clifton, holding down the shift will just make a copy.
No, not while drawing a line.
I guess you are modifying an existing spline in the video though. In the case shown in your video, make sure axis constraints are enabled, x-axis constraint is on, endpoint snap is on, select the desired vertex, click to line endpoint, move along x-axis and select the endpoint below which you are squaring up to. Do not use the UCS arrow things, you can’t use snap in conjuntion with those.
Oh, also, don’t use 2d snap. It only works if everything is perfectly in the zero plane. Use 2.5d for line work.
I’m not sure why this isn’t working for you. I perform dozens of similar snap operations daily.
Delete your 3dsmax.ini file. Save your sittings.. If you have any.
The F5, F6, F7 seems to solve my issue. I do get that rubber band effect and it moves slow.
Well, I’m glad that works for you, but its the same as using your axis constraints buttons which you were already using. You can turn off the rubber band, which I do immediately after installing max. What noob programmer thought that was a good idea?
The ‘issues’ with snapping in Max are one of the reasons I much prefer to do my 3d modelling in Autocad and file link into Max. I know there are some things that are quicker in Max, but on balance, I prefer the robustness of typing ‘.xy’, ‘.x of this but .y of that’ etc within Autocad.
I totally agree. Max snaps in my opinion kind of suck and never seem to snap where I want them to on the first try. For AutoCAD, in addition to the wonderfully simple ‘.xy’, ‘.x’, etc., I’ll add that object tracking snaps are an invaluable tool to get things aligned between multiple objects quickly and precisely. Add to this using grips as snapping points and it’s a somewhat perfect system. It amazes me that Max doesn’t have a snapping system that can rival AutoCad. Admittedly, I don’t model all that much in MAX so some of this is inexperience on my part but for arch/viz stuff it’s really painfull to use sometimes.
Modeling
I don’t like modeling in Autocad, although snaps are great there. I just modeled a large building using nothing but polys. I started out with one poly and grew my model from that one poly. I extended edges, connected edges, and all the other great tools for poly modeling. You can’t touch this kind of modeling in autocad. You have total control over everything and it is great. Autocad is easy and predictable, but I feel it limits you. I teach Revit and Revit is extremely easy to model in, much easier than Autocad, but I never use it on my projects.
I am not sure my F5, F6, F7 works for me over my toolbar constraints, but it does.
I used AutoCAD for over a decade and was definitely confused when I started using Max snaps. But now I don’t have much trouble. (and I dread doing anything in autodcad)
As mentioned above, turn on Use Axis Constraints, use selection lock
Turn on Snap Uses Axis Center (or something like that)
Make a keyboard or toolbar toggle for Ortho and Polar Angle snaps.
I like to toggle snaps off, start moving a vert or whatever, then turn snaps on mid drag. With the above setting, Use Axis Center, it snaps using the Axis.
Want to be really annoyed? zoom in close after you think you have snapped perfectly. Max does not have the same accuracy that Autocad does. But does it really matter?
Also get to know the Align command (Shift+A) there is a lot you can do with that. Use Normal Align and AutoGrid…
Get the Clone plugin (free) from Itoo or from maxplugins.de,
ok i’ll stop and just say this, I have a lot more success modeling in Max when I accept that it is not Autocad or Maya or Rhino or any other application. Instead of focusing on how it doesn’t work, I try and figure out how it does work and make it work for me. I’m much happier this way, 