Snapping geometry/components to curves in Maya

KeCzajkowski

So snapping to curve with middle mouse allows you to slide objects and components alone the edge of a poly surface but it doesn't let you align things that way.  What I mean is I can get one object to align to another's edge generally but it's inaccurate.  Maybe some pictures can help explain.

 

So I have two objects and I want to align the smaller one to the larger one's surface.

I can just do it by eye but that takes a while.  As I said above I can slide the geometry along the top edge with middle mouse and C and get something like the following (exaggerated to show what I mean).

I was wondering if there was a way I could get the vertex to snap to the edge directly above it to keep the orientation the same?

Alex_J

tried the align tool? 

Align objects | Maya | Autodesk Knowledge Network


also check out the bonus tools. a few goodies in there related to alignment of objects

KeCzajkowski

I thought the align tool only does stuff on the object level?  Though the blurb about edit pivot mode might be useful I'll give that a shot.

KeCzajkowski

Yeah I tried it a bit and it's going to be useful for a lot of stuff but doesn't quite work out with what I want to do.  I'm looking for similar usage to holding v while moving stuff to snap to verts but for curves.

KeCzajkowski

Alex_J said:

tried the align tool? 

Align objects | Maya | Autodesk Knowledge Network


also check out the bonus tools. a few goodies in there related to alignment of objects

I think I'm getting more use out of the pivot adjustment thing than for what I posted this thread about so thank you very much for that haha.