I'm a confirmed SketcherUpper now, but that one really had me confused at first. I was so frustrated trying to move something to where I want it to be that I almost gave up there. Here's the trick. Say you have two boxes and you want to move them together. Assume that you want to put them so that the bottom right corner of one touches the bottom left corner of the other one. Before you try to move it, click on it - if it's a component, you'll see the box, if it's not a component, click again to make sure the whole thing is selected. Everything which you are going to move will have the dots which indicate that it is selected. Then select the move tool and click on the bottom right corner and move the cursor to the bottom left corner of the other box. When it snaps into place, click again. The key is to grab by a point which will align with some other point you want to move it to.Originally Posted by Larry Fox
In the time it took to write that, I could have done a hundred such moves, but before I figured that out, I just couldn't do it without trying a hundred times.
Yep, this one messed me up for a long time too. What I didn't know was that you can't make something a component if it is touching anything else which is not a component. The way to tell is to double click on it and see what all is highlighted. If anything besides what you want to select is connected to it, it won't work. You need to isolate the object you are going to make a component out of. This is especially confusing because it doesn't tell you that it didn't work, it just disappears the same way as if it had worked. Then when you re-do it, it says you've already used that name. Again, once you learn it, takes just a second.
There are a couple of ways to skin this cat. One is to make a guideline/layout line/tape measure line and bring it to the place you want the I-beam to go to, then move the I-beam to it. Another way is to make marks on things, so you can move things by grabbing those marks. For instance, you might draw a line across the top of one of your walls and draw a line on the I-beam, then grab the line on the I-beam and move it to the line on the wall. You can also grab things by the middle of a line and move it to the middle of another line.
Don't give up, it's a great and fun (addictive) program. I think a lot of people figure out the things above, then they can't remember how they were confused when they started. That makes it hard for them to explain how to solve the problem. I was so frustrated with the first thing that I actually wrote it down when I learned it. Now I'm pretty darn good at it and sometimes I draw things just for kicks.
Keep coming back with questions.
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