Just designing something in Carbide Create today and thought a nice-to-have feature would be the ability to position elements relative to each other, similar to how the existing “Transform” > “Move” feature works. Currently “Move” positions things relative to the project zero (bottom left most of the time for me). But i thought it would be nice to have the ability to select two (or more) objects and use a similar feature to position them relative to another element.
Currently, if I have an exterior cutout, and want to make a pocket that sits somewhere within this cutout, I can either:
create a spacer element, align the spacer to the exterior cutout, align the interior element to the spacer. Possibly repeat for aligning the element in the other X or Y axis
select the exterior cutout, select the “Move” tool, make note of the X,Y coordinates, do some math, then use the “Move” tool on the desired element, realize I messed up some basic addition / subtraction, more math, repeat the “Move” on the desired element
Instead, it would be nice if I could just click the interior element, shift+click the the exterior element, click on the “Move Plus” tool, enter my desired numbers, and click Done.
Just something I thought of today that would have been useful to me, and might be useful to others as well. Thanks for everything you guys do!
EDIT: just thought of something else. Maybe making just a spacer tool? Instead of manually creating a spacer element and doing that whole process, maybe just selecting two elements, clicking a “Spacer” tool, then plugging in the desired X or Y distance between the two elements.
Hmm, I did not know about the feature. Thanks for the tip! I don’t know if I could have used it in this case or not. I’ve attached a few example screenshots that show my existing workflow.
Method 1 works and is what I usually use. Method 2 also works, but requires positioning the exterior cutout exactly within the stock (10 X, 5 Y), then adding / subtracting those values any time I want to position something.
Instead of doing that, I thought it might be convenient to just select the 2 elements (the one i want to move, and the one I am moving relative to), click a “Move 2.0” button, and plug in the X, Y offsets relative to the fixed feature. Not a necessary feature by any means, but something I thought might be useful and faster/more convenient.
I’ve attached another screenshot below with kind of a basic idea of what the tool might look like. I just did it for the Inside Edge (offset), but image an identical version for the outside edge as well.
EDIT: thinking about it some more, it might not even be necessary to create a whole new tool. you could just modify the existing ones by adding the measurement box in the middle that is set to zero by default. When set to zero, the alignment behavior would then be just the same as it is now. But if a measurement were added, then it would behave like I mentioned.
