How to change, reset Axis in Sketchup

SketchUp has the appearance of The Axes.
The Axes make it easier for users to manipulate points by interpolating points, lines and objects.

In this topic, 3dshouse would like to show you “How to change, reset Axis in Sketchup”.

These steps are identical in every modern release through SketchUp 2026 (desktop and the free web version), and they work the same whether you are on a subscription or an older perpetual install. One detail almost nobody notices: each colored axis is solid on one side of the origin and dotted on the other — the solid half is the positive direction, so “red” alone is not enough to know which way you are inferencing.

STEP:

• You can you can show or hide the Axes tool by choosing Tools – Axes.
• To move the Axes, right- click an empty area on an axis and choose “Move”
• In the Move Sketching Context dialog box, type the distance you want to move and rotate each axis. This coordinate system is created by red line, green line, blue line it is similar Cartesian coordinate system X, Y, Z.
• To relocate the Axes, right-click on origin point, choose “Place”.
  Next, click at the bottom corner of an object in your model that you want to set as the axes origin point.
  A dotted red and green axis extends from your mouse cursor.
• Faster than Place: with the Axes tool active, just double-click any point in the model to drop the axes there instantly. Single-click sets the origin, the second move sets the red direction, and the third sets the green/blue tilt — so you can re-orient onto a sloped face in one fluid motion.
• You can also hide the axis by right-click and without using the toolbar.
  Right-click, choose “Align View” to aligning the drawing axes with the cardinal directions.
• Aligning the axes to the cardinal directions is not just cosmetic — the sun and shadows are driven by the model axes, so a rotated global axis will make your Shadows study point the sun the wrong way even after you set the correct location and time. Square your axes to true north before trusting a shadow study.
• You can see local coordinate system of component or group.
  To unhide local coordinate system, go to Window – Model Info – Show component axes

• You do not have to explode anything to undo a global axis change. Right-click an empty spot on any axis and choose “Reset” — it snaps the drawing axes straight back to the world origin and default orientation. Reset only appears once the axes have actually been moved from default.
• Changing Component Axes: Right click – Change axes for component, click at your point you want.
  If you want to reset the axes component, explode and recreate component.
  Click “Set Component Axes”, choose the axes point, then click “Create”
• A component’s axis origin is also its insertion point — the spot that snaps to your cursor every time you drop that component from the library. So setting the component axes to a logical corner or base-center (instead of leaving it at some arbitrary internal point) is what makes a component place cleanly on the ground or against a wall. Re-running Change Axes is the proper way to fix this — exploding just to move the origin is overkill.

• For changing Group axis: Double click to open Group and right- click at local coordinate system.
  Then choose “Place”, click at your point you want. A dotted red and green axis extends from your mouse cursor.
  You can move, place, rotating this axes
  If you want to return default axes of group, explode and recreate group.
• Be aware that group axes are far less “sticky” than component axes — a group is essentially an unnamed one-off component, and certain operations (or converting it to a real component) can snap its local axes back, so they are not something to rely on long-term. If you need the local origin to stay put, make it a proper component and set its axes there instead.