Rotate
Turn things about a point.
Keyboard: Q - SketchUp's key for it, not R, which is the rectangle.
How to use it
- Pick what you want to turn first. With nothing picked it turns everything joined to what you click, which is usually what you meant but not always.
- Click the center it turns about.
- Click a point to measure the angle from - anywhere on the thing will do, and a corner is easiest to aim at.
- Swing round to the angle and click, or type it and press Enter.
Typing the angle
34.1 is degrees. 8:12 is a slope - eight in
twelve, the way a roof pitch is written - and it is there because that is the
number on the drawing you are working from, and doing the arctangent in your
head to get 33.69 is how mistakes happen.
Which plane it turns in
This is the part that catches people, because in 3D "turn it 30 degrees" is not a complete instruction until something says about what.
- By default the plane comes from the face under the cursor when you click the center. Click the center on the top of a box and it turns flat on that top, which is nearly always what you meant.
- The arrow keys say it outright, before you start: right is red, left is green, up is blue. The color of the protractor tells you which one is holding.
- Alt frees it from the face under the cursor. It then turns flat unless an arrow says otherwise, and Alt again goes back to following faces. The protractor works exactly the same way.
Copies, and rows of them
Ctrl leaves a copy behind, so the original stays and a turned
one appears. Straight after a copy, 3x makes three of them at
that angle apart, and /3 divides the turn you just made into
three - which is how a bolt circle, a fan of rafters or a row of spokes gets
laid out without any arithmetic.
See also
- Move - the same idea in a straight line, with the same copy trick
- The protractor - marking an angle rather than turning by one
- The working plane - the other place this question comes up