Transform Basics
Use Transform to put a body where it belongs. Select the body, press M, and add positioning steps until it is in place.
A stack, not a set of coordinates
Transform does not hold an X, a Y and a Z. It holds an ordered list of steps, and each one acts on the result of the ones above it. Mate a face, then rotate about an axis, then nudge 2 mm along a normal: three steps, in that order, each reading the model as it stands after the previous.
That is what makes a Transform survive an edit. A step that says "this face against that face" is recomputed when either face moves. Six numbers cannot be.
Press Add positioning step to open the list of kinds, grouped by what they do: Free, Snap, Align, Move, Rotate, Invert. The three groups have an article each: Position Steps, Orientation Steps and Directed Moves.
Working the stack
- Order matters. Drag a step by its handle, or use the up and down arrows in its header, and the body re-positions on the new order.
- Disable a step from its header to see what it was contributing. It stays in the list.
- Remove one with the × in its header.
- A step you have not filled in does nothing and shows an amber needs input chip. The steps around it still run, so a half-built stack keeps the body where the finished steps put it rather than snapping it back to where it started.
Free offset
The simplest step: six numbers, three of displacement and three of rotation, applied as one move. Reach for it to nudge something after a mate, or when there is nothing in the model to align to.
The rotation happens about the body's own centre, captured when the Transform was created.
Dragging instead of typing
A free offset can be dragged. Press the arrows button on the step's row and a gizmo appears on the body: arrows to slide it, rings to spin it. The drag writes into that step, and only that one.
Two things about it:
- The magnet is on. Drag a body within 1.5 mm of a vertex and it snaps to it, with a Snapped badge to say so.
- Dragging overwrites what you typed. A drag rewrites all six numbers, so a parameter or an expression in any of them becomes a plain number. Type the numbers or drag them, not both.
Arming a pick slot turns the gizmo off, and arming the gizmo cancels a pick. They compete for the same clicks in the viewport, so only one is ever live.
Transforming a copy
Transform a copy at the top of the panel leaves the original where it is and moves a duplicate. It is the quickest way to get a second body out of one you have already modelled, and the copy carries the original's threads with it.
When a step cannot resolve
If the face or point a step was built on stops existing, the whole Transform fails rather than quietly landing somewhere else. The message names the step. Open it, pick the geometry again, and the stack runs.
See also
- Position Steps: the steps that put a body somewhere
- Orientation Steps: the steps that turn it
- Directed Moves: the steps that measure the model for you
- Using References: what to point a step at so it survives an edit