Currently, while building, it is unreasonably difficult to align more complex objects, especially if their desired “alignment point” differs from the center (or sides) of said object’s bounding box. While it can be slightly mitigated by directly changing an object’s Origin value, this method becomes completely untenable whenever there’s angles & local space involved. As such, developers must often resort to having less precision when aligning these objects.
Here’s a simple practical demonstration to show off the issue. Let’s say I have a TV monitor mesh with a dedicated Mounting arm (left) as the pivot. I want to align it to the support beam (right).
Using the built in align tool in this instance is not an option, as it completely disregards the desired pivot of the object, and instead just centers it based on the bounding box.
As the support beam is at 45 degree angle, the only way to align them properly in this case is by copying the X & Z Position components, but this comes with the drawback of having to manually realign the model to touch the surface again, which can be quite tricky when dealing with more complex surfaces.
This is where my proposed solution comes in:
Introduce a pivot based align mode.
Were a solution like this to be implemented, it would considerably streamline the experience of working with complex objects with non-standard pivot points.