Align Normals Button

Aligns the normals of two objects.

In a mesh or loft object, you can use this to align faces.

You can use Align Normals with any selection that can be transformed.

If you use Align Normals while a sub-object selection is active, only that selection is aligned. This is useful when aligning sub-object selections of faces, since otherwise there’s no valid face normal for the source object.

Align Normals respects smoothing groups and uses the interpolated normal, based on face smoothing. As a result, you can orient the source object face to any part of the target surface, rather than having it snap to face normals.

For an object with no faces (such as helper objects, space warps, particle systems, and atmospheric gizmos), Align Normals uses the Z axis and origin of the object as a normal. For this reason, you can use a Pointer object with Align Normals.

From this flyout, you can also choose Align, Place Highlight, Align to Camera, or Align to View.

Reference

The Align Normals dialog box lets you adjust (or cancel) the current alignment, and contains the following controls:

Position Offset

Lets you translate the source object perpendicular to the normal.

Rotation Offset

Lets you rotate the source object about the normal’s axis. You see the rotation in real time.

Flip Normal

Determines whether the source normal is aligned to match the same direction as the target normal. This defaults to off, since you usually want the two normals to have opposing directions. When you select and clear this check box, you see the source object flip 180.

OK/Cancel Align

The Cancel button is labeled Cancel Align to make it clear that you’re not only canceling the settings in the dialog box, but canceling the original transform of the source object.

How To

To align normals

1. Select a source object. This is the object that moves during alignment.
2. Click Align Normals in the default toolbar, or choose Tools/Align Normals.
3. Drag across the surface of the source object.

The Align Normal cursor appears, attached to a crosshair. A blue arrow at the crosshair indicates the current normal.

4. Move the crosshair and blue arrow until you locate the normal you want to use, then release.

The blue arrow remains as reference to the source normal.

5. Drag across the surface of the target object.

A green arrow at the crosshair indicates the current normal.

6. Move the crosshair and green arrow until you locate the normal you want to use as a target, then release.

The source object moves into alignment with the target normal, and the Normal Align dialog appears.

7. Do one of the following:
• Click OK to accept the alignment.
• Using the dialog, make modifications to the alignment before clicking OK.