Cineversity

Hi,

I have recently moved over to Cinema 4D from 3DS Max and I am having trouble with something that was pretty basic in 3DS. I use C4D to produce visualisations from engineers drawings so it is quite important to get dimensions accurate. In 3DS if I wanted to clone an object and place it 1000mm away from the original I would just right click, select clone, then type 1000 in the relevant axis and press enter. However in C4D I have not been able to figure out how to do the same process. Right now I am dragging the object holding CTRL and placing the item manually roughly at the right distance. This is ok but ideally I would like to get these distances precise. Am I missing something really obvious or is it not possible to do this in C4D?

Any help would be really useful.

Thanks

Hi D83,

Click and drag, while holding command (CTRL /CMD), in the object manager. This creates a copy without changing the position.

In the axis parameter field (Attribute Manger>Coordinates) type in the axis you like to change x+1000 (If you are in mm and based on your example), press Return, and done. The x is the previous value and the + the added value.

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Alternative to the number, you could drag the axis and while you drag, hold down the Shift key and it provide certain steps. (Mesh>Commands>Modeling Settings CMD+M to change these quantize values.)

The “Tools>Arrange Objects>Duplicate” would do exactly this, but have a look, I’m not convinced that it is faster for a single object duplication than the way described above.
But—you could set it to Copies 1 and Linear and in Attribute Manager>Edit>Set as Default. In the Main Menu>Windows>Customize> set the short cut Alt/Option+CMD/CTRL+D if available. This should speed things up.

Let me know if there is anything else.

All the best

As a more advanced option, Keith describes here a great way to customize most tools to your specific needs. If “setting as default” is too limited for your work:
https://www.cineversity.com/vidplaytut/tool_presets

This would be my take on it, but please test this carefully, this is just my sketch. 

In the script manager you can render even an icon and later set a short cut for it.

How it works for me? Selecting the object, changing the value. Done.

Screenshot:
https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/1Q5MZi0w7IMIPeJByCLL2sHnV14BhqhcrssBI7dNxgx?ref_=cd_ph_share_link_copy