Move an entire cube with one of its corners snapping to the grid.. How??

[Heinz Schmiedhofer]

I would consider the following as a standard use case, but I am unable to figure out how this could work without shenanigans such as manipulating the geometry origin first:

How can i move an entire cube with one of its corners snapping to the grid?

[Adrian Bellworthy]

You can do it in edit mode,
In the snapping options enable ‘Active’, ‘Increment’ and ‘Absolute Grid’.
Select all vertices with ‘A’ then deselect and reselect the corner vertex you want to snap to the grid so it is the active vertex, hold CTRL while moving the mouse to the grid location you want to snap to.

Still a bit of a shenanigan, but I disagree it being a standard use case. It’s probably very rare to use a basic cube in a scene. Usually the object would be modeled at the world origin then moved (snapping) to the location required in the scene. The origin point would usually be moved to the base of the object. 

[Heinz Schmiedhofer]

Hey Adrian, thanks a lot for your quick reply! What you’re describing is exactly what I initially wanted to add to my question. This was what I thought to be the most meaningful approach, however, I don’t get this to work either. It does do increments, but they are not on the grid exactly, even with ‘absolute grid snap’ on. Looks like even with ‘snap with active’, Blender is using the average location of vertices?

You might not see this if your cube has the standard size, could you please re-check with an arbitrarily sized cube?

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hi Heinz @strudel ,

As far as I know, Increment Snapping always Snaps with the Objects Origin (and in Edit Mode with the average of the Selected Vertices, so Adrian’s method won’t work…I must admit that that was my first guess as well, though).

The best way, I can think of, is to place the Cube with the corner you want to Snap to the Grid on a Grid Point and then enable Snapping with Absolute Grid Snapping disabled.

[Heinz Schmiedhofer]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your reply! This is my current workflow, i.e. setting the object origin to the vertex I want to snap with. Not very elegant. What do you think?

• go to edit mode
• select vertex to snap with
• shift-s: 3d-cursor to selected
• go to object mode
• menu item: object/set_origin/origin_to_3d_cursor
• snap settings: snap_with: closest, snap_to: increment, absolute_grid_snap
• move object
• after moving: menu item: object/set_origin/origin_to_geometry

[Martin Bergwerf]

Yes, that works perfectly and is probably what I would do as well…I proposed the other solution, because you mentioned that you were looking for another way.

One alternative to your method could be to use the Option: Transform > Affect Only > Origins and then (with Vertex Snapping) Snap the Origin directly to the Corner. Then disable the Option and change the Snapping to Increment.

Not sure if that is much faster or easier.

[Omar Domenech]

There is also that new 4.0 method. JL starts to explain it in this lesson at around 4:40, but the part of the new snapping is around 6:05

https://cgcookie.com/lessons/pivots-snapping-and-proportional-editing

[Adrian Bellworthy]

That’s nuts… 
I very rarely snap to increments, but I would expect Snap With ‘Active’ would work as it does with any other Snap To option.

[Heinz Schmiedhofer]

Omar: Agreed, this is a very nice new feature. Unfortunately though, it’s not snapping to the grid, only to vertices.

[Heinz Schmiedhofer]

Martin: Yeah, that’s a big time saver compared to my approach. Thanks! 

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