aligning cars / trees etc. along a grade...

[hockley91]

I have always manually aligned trees and cars that are along a grade with the "z" axis. Is there a way to align all of this entourage with the click of a button so I don't have to do it manually?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Claudio Branch]

This problem usually comes up when I use the Spacing Tool with "Follow" selected and the objects are following a spline with an elevation that changes.

 

I select all of the objects with a skewed z-axis, hit the Align button and select an object with the correct z-axis, and finally just select z-axis under the Align Orientation (Local) field.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

You can try Soulburn's Object Dropper. It usually works for me, providing the pivot is placed at the bottom of the object.

 

If the pivot is not at the bottom of the object. If it is not, then you could use Blur's Pivot PLacer to move it to the bottom of the object.

 

It will place the pivot point at the grade, or I think you might be able to specify slightly below the grade in the case of trees. If not, you could just select everything, and move it down a couple of inches.

[Chad Warner]

You can also use (which I do quite often) use the itoosoft "glue" script.

[hockley91]

Thanks everyone! My hand's gettin' tired!

[Camby1298]

Here's I script I used almost all the time when distributing plants when I'll align them in plan and drop them to my surface. And Ive selected thousands and thousands of objects at the same time and this script has never crashed on me; and works quickly.

 

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/move-to-surface

[John Pruden]

I second Neil's (Soulburn) Object Dropper script. I used it just today actually. Dropped a few hundred plants on a non-flat surface in a second or two. I've seen a few other scripts that do the same... Neil's is just the one I can remember by name.