Prim alignment

Is there a secret to aligning prims?

I always have a hard time joining two or more prims because in edit there is a yellow 'glow' around the selected prim and so I can't see how 'close' I am to butting two prims. In edit it looks fine, but when I get out of edit and look I see a small 'gap'.

Any suggestions?

Tia

This may be a luddite way to do it, but, when I'm trying to align shapes that are the same size, I click on the neighboring prim to see the coordinates, and then click on the prim I want to adjust and simply enter the same coordinates. Of course, you can't do all three coordinates that way (or they would occupy the same space, instead of adjacent spaces), but at least you cover two coordinates this way.


...come to think of it, I guess they don't have to be the same size.

use the grid, its an option on the building menu

if you select postion for an object, there is a red/blue triangle and a green/blue triangle and a red/green triangle on the screen a little bit away from the position handles in the middle of the prim.

If you click on those arrows a white grid should show up that will help w/ aligning your prims in all three planes.

How about doing the math and looking at the size/location of the other prim, and then figuring out what the location of the other prim should be.

I'm surprised anyone tries to put two prims together w/o using measurements.

yeah, what they said...OR

if you're building with simple block prims (floors, walls, ceilings), you can select edit and copy...drag the copied prim over some. It will maintain 2 axes of location identical to the original prim.
Then take note of the size of the prims being joined. Prims are located by using their center point so two 10 meter prims will be exactly 10 meters from each other (5 meters from center of one prim + 5 meters from center of the other prim)
This also works for diff sized prims. If one prim is 5 meters wide and the other is 10 meters wide, they will be aligned 7.5 meters from each other (5 + 2.5)

perhaps I'm talking extremely basic and you are already well beyond what I'm talking about, but I see plenty of stores with overlapping prims in the walls and floors that make me want to vomit.

That's funny, when I do "ctrl-D" to make a copy, it creates the copy offset by a few clicks. Is there a way to change this default?

You may want to experiment with options under create -- keep tool selected and make a copy of selection. The will replicate a prim on the side selected. Very good for making multiple prim floors and keeping alignment perfect.

I hate positioning things by math because every object is positioned by its center point, not edges. So when I'm trying to line something up that goes down to the .001 meter in calculations, it doesn't make for a very pretty sight.

And then... Even when I do have every object the same height and positioned the same height on the Z-axis it still looks like they're not lined up.

And then theres the thing where I position everything exactly how I want it, and then I come back to it 5 minutes later and everything is somehow nudged off. x-x

Ahhhh ...I know what you need to do. Get ahold of a "totally clear" texture and apply that to the entire prim first.
then select the prim again, choose "select texture" up at the top, and then select the surfaces that will show (wall or floor) while leaving the edges invisible. This will get rid of that little seam that you are talking about.


I have a copy if you need one....IM me in world and I'll give you a copy. Though I'm not in too often...usually around 4pm EST and then later at night around 10pm EST