Aligning geospheres - nood question

[conrad8]

Hey guys,

 

[edit: noob question]

 

I'm trying to make a series of simple geospheres

(1 segment, icosa, no smoothing, base pivot)

 

I'm having a problem aligning the flat surfaces to each other.

As you can see here I've tried changing the pivot (the pivot shown here was rotated manually - which is not what I'd like) and I'm having no luck with using the align tool to perfectly centre on a segment surface.

 

Just what a series of geometric domes to align flat on their surfaces.

 

Am I missing something blatently obvious.. or could you give some advise.

Cheers

 

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Look for the Normal Align button.

 

Select the object to move.

Click the Normal Align button.

Click and hold on a face on the moving (source) object. Look for the blue arrow to show up.

Let go.

Click and hold on a face on the destination object. Look for the green arrow.

Let go.

Fill in the blanks on the dialog if need be.

 

The source object moves so that its face is smack to the fact on the destination object.

 

Hm... rereading... getting them centered...

 

Not having much luck. First idea was to turn on Center Face snapping when doing the Normal Align. But NA didn't seem to care about the snap. OK, so align then move from center to center. But it's hard to pick the two faces, they both need to be camera facing. This can work, just need some distance between them and a close in camera. But it's tedious.

 

I can get a multi-step process that involves normal align, then twice use that nice script which sets working pivot to an edge and move with axis constraints snap to z. Also tedious.

 

If you wanted them to sprout on their corner from the center of the face, that's easy.

 

I've tried creating a number of different things in the right place with center face snap and then seeing if I could develop the right shape. Couldn't.

[conrad8]

Thanks Peter, that helps me and at least I'm alomost there.

 

Yeah centering is proving tricky.

 

Most appreciated though

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Can you tesselate the objects to put a vertex in the middle of each face?

 

...

 

Yes you can. Throw a tesselate modifier on each one, set to Face-Center. Then you can align normals and move, snap to vert.