[LDCad] Rotation axis/ point finder

[N. W. Perry]

Is there a way to quickly find and select rotation axes in LDCAD?

Right now I have to manually move the selection center to the preferred position then select the right axis and rotate the part.
If I later on another day with another model use the same part again I have again manually find the right position of the selection center,
which takes some time and is very repetitive and also quite fiddly. Is there some way to save this information of where the rotation axis is?
Especially for "natural" / "real life rotation axes" it would be convenient if there was a move selection center to rotation axis option (if selection is a single part).

"natural rotation axis" would be e.g. the connection (axis) of a hinge.


standard selection center (and rotation axes)


moved selection center to "natural rotation axis"


Also what is the best and quickest way to do this if the selection is a submodel ?
I know I can again move the selection center manually - but most of the time I actually want to rotate the whole submodel
around the "natural rotation axis" of a part of the submodel.
I would like to set the selection center of the sub model just by clicking on that part (in nested mode? ) and then choose set to rotation axis and
then the selection center of that part becomes a selection center of the whole sub model and also setting the grid in the right way so choosing the part/submodel rotate option
rotates around the right axis-  in the main model space.

I wonder if a macro/script would be able to do this and if that could become fully part of LDCAD.

Because currently it takes way to long for me to rotate parts around commonly used axis (what I call "natural rotation axes")
and also whole groups/submodels/multiple bricks selections.

I hope it is understandable what I want.

An easy workaround is to use groups. You could group even a single part, then change the selection center and the "Set group center" under the Grouping menu. Doesn't help you in multiple models, but at least within one model it keeps the center of that part consistent.

In your hinge example, in my opinion the solution is in the parts authoring itself—the part should have had its origin set to the rotation point. But it wasn't, so…

For submodels, I use the same principle: set the origin of the submodel to a likely rotation point.

Finally (and I had frankly forgotten about this), in the Selection Center context menu, you can jump the selection center to the different snap positions of a part (assuming it had snap info), which is likely to include a natural rotation axis.