Offer more alignment options

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Original report (archived issue) by Steffi Paepcke (Bitbucket: spaepcke).

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In snap/align user study, when aligning wheel to chassis, the wheel aligned on the inside of the chassis, rather than on the outside. We should offer more alignment options.

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Original comment by Louise Poubel (Bitbucket: chapulina, GitHub: chapulina).

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Right now we offer 3 alignment options per axis. If we're aligning to 1st selected:

1. min: align min of 2nd selected to min of 1st selected

2. max: align max of 2nd selected to max of 1st selected

3. center: align center of 2nd selected to center of 1st selected

We could add a button which, if checked, changes the behavior of min and max to:

1. min: align max of 2nd selected to min of 1st selected

2. max: align min of 2nd selected to max of 1st selected

Not sure what would be written / pictured on that button though.

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Original comment by William Woodall (Bitbucket: William Woodall, GitHub: wjwwood).

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When I mentioned the button I was thinking of this button from Solidworks' mate system:

http://blogs.solidworks.com/tech/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/MateAlignment.png

I think their iconography makes sense there, and it does what you've described (I think). One potential difference is that in Solidworks they actually rotate the part along a coplanar axis so that it's still the same two faces which are being snapped together, just rotated so that the rest of the object projects one way or the other.

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Original comment by Louise Poubel (Bitbucket: chapulina, GitHub: chapulina).

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Yeah, the icons are really clear there.

You're right about the difference, my suggestion doesn't involve rotating a part. Rotating things to face each other in the realm of Gazebo is closer to "snap" than "align" right now.

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Original comment by Louise Poubel (Bitbucket: chapulina, GitHub: chapulina).

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I implemented what I suggested in a branch, let me know what you think:

https://youtu.be/5WZ6bZaHlJk

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Original comment by Steffi Paepcke (Bitbucket: spaepcke).

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That looks awesome! I definitely support adding that.

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Original comment by Louise Poubel (Bitbucket: chapulina, GitHub: chapulina).

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I'll prepare a pull request. Let me know if you'd like to use an icon or change the word "inverted", add a tooltip or something like that.

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Original comment by Ian Chen (Bitbucket: Ian Chen, GitHub: iche033).

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it would also be nice to be able to:

• align min/max of 2nd to center of 1st..

future work

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Original comment by Steffi Paepcke (Bitbucket: spaepcke).

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@chapulina Does this Solidworks explanation pertain to our version, or is it different? http://help.solidworks.com/2013/English/SolidWorks/sldworks/c_Mate_Alignment_SWassy.htm

If so, perhaps a similar icon would be good.

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Original comment by Louise Poubel (Bitbucket: chapulina, GitHub: chapulina).

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Not really. We're not handling faces and normals here. Instead, we're getting the rightmost point of one model and bringing it to the rightmost / leftmost point of another and so on. Which doesn't involve rotating the models. Does that make sense?

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Original comment by Louise Poubel (Bitbucket: chapulina, GitHub: chapulina).

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pull request #2040

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Original comment by Steve Peters (Bitbucket: Steven Peters, GitHub: scpeters).

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Now that pull request #2040 has been merged, what remains to be done?

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Original comment by Nate Koenig (Bitbucket: Nathan Koenig).

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• set version to "all"

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Original comment by Louise Poubel (Bitbucket: chapulina, GitHub: chapulina).

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A nice new feature would be to align in a model's local frame rather than the world frame.

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Original comment by Louise Poubel (Bitbucket: chapulina, GitHub: chapulina).

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• Edited issue description* set component to "gui"