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I need to move an entire object, so that one of the faces is exactly at Z=0. What is the best way to do this? Basically, if I could select Grid or 3D Cursor in the Snap To menu, that would be perfect:

Imgur

My current workaround is to select the face, copy its Z coordinate, select all, move it all down by that same amount. Is there a faster way?

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2 Answers 2

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You can snap to the grid or the cursor by pressing ShiftS, however I'm not sure that is the fastest way in this case.

Method 1

Transform snapping and a guiding plane.

  1. Add a plane underneath the object

  2. Enable Face Snapping:

    enter image description here

  3. Press GZ0 with the object selected and your cursor over the plane:

    enter image description here

Pros:

  • Works in object mode and edit mode

Cons:

  • Requires a new object.

  • May require positioning/snapping the 3D cursor (ShiftS) before hand (to make sure the plane is in the right place).

Method 2

Positioning and snapping to the 3D cursor with ShiftS.

  1. Snap cursor to face (select face in edit mode and press ShiftS> Cursor to Selected)

  2. Snap the object origin to the 3D cursor (switch to object mode and press CtrlShiftAltC> Origin to Cursor)

  3. Snap the 3D cursor to where you want the face to go (if you want it to go straight down, you can set the Z position of the cursor in 3D view > Tool Shelf (N) > 3D cursor. In the gif I snapped it to the center with ShiftS, however it's slightly fewer clicks to use ShiftC. Note that ShiftC will also center the view between all visible objects)

  4. Snap the object to cursor (ShiftS> Selected to cursor)

enter image description here

Cons:

  • Requires repositioning of object origin

  • Only works in object mode (ShiftS works based on the pivot point, so in this case the center of the object would be snapped to the cursor)

Method 3

Snap to grid with ShiftS, then increment snap to align with the gird floor.

Note that Snap to Grid will snap to a 3D grid, not the grid floor (though the grid floor is a 2D representation of the same grid which is used for snapping)

enter image description here

Cons:

  • Will snap object to align with grid on X and Y as well.
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  • $\begingroup$ For method 3 you can hold CTRL key to snap on grid while moving the object. $\endgroup$
    – Polosson
    Commented Apr 4, 2014 at 21:19
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    $\begingroup$ @Polosson That's actually what I did (you'll notice that the snapping/magnet icon is disabled). Holding Ctrl actually uses the current snapping mode (at least with transform operators), which was set to Face until I set it back to Increment (the default). $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3
    Commented Apr 4, 2014 at 21:21
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You can enable and use the Drop to Ground addon, it's under the Testing category. After, that just select the object then the ground plane and press Drop to Ground. No need to change your object centers or any cumbersome tricks with the 3d cursor.

enter image description here

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