Snap position object in front of active camera

Question

I cannot find this function so please let me know if I am just missing it - but it has occurred to me that it would be very handy to have the ability to align any given opblect in front of the currently active camera.
If a camera Moves throughout a scene and you suddenly want to duplicate an element that is elsewhere in a scene, if you duplicate it, it s duplicated in place.  Is there a way to "snap position" an object existing in a scene in front of a camera?

Answer 1

Why would I first need to set the origin of the camera to the center of the scene before cutting if the camera i want the object in front of it elsewhere in the scene.
You don't have to reset the camera, just the duplicated object. If you reset the camera, you'd loose any animation settings you might have.
Am I to understand that Motion 5 just defaults to placing a cut and pasted object in front of a camera only if it's transforms are reset?  That seems kind of arbitrary.
I don't know that it's arbitrary,  it seems to be related  to this (from the motion documentation):
Drag and Drop onto the Canvas
Dragging and dropping an object onto the Canvas adds the object to the scene at the focal plane of the current camera. Dragging an object into the Layers list or clicking the Apply button in the preview area of the File Browser positions the object at 0, 0, 0.
Basically, depending on how you add objects, motion determines where to place them in the scene. This seems to be the case for copy and paste too.  Copy and paste includes all of the transformations already applied to the object.  The paste treats your camera focal plane like the origin for the scene, but your object has it's own transforms, that's how it gets offset from the camera focal plane.  Resetting the object to the origin removes those settings and works like using the apply button mentioned in the documentation.
Here's an example to show what I'm talking about.
1.Add a camera and rotate it, make sure you can see the origin for the grid.
2. Add a shape from the library using the apply button in the inspector.
-The shape gets added at the origin, not at the camera view.
3. Reposition the camera, make sure to change the position and rotation.
4. Add the shape but this time drag and drop to the canvas.
-Notice how the shape is at the focal plane of the camera. If you look at it's settings they match what is needed to position the object at the camera's focal plane.
5. Reposition the camera one more time.
6. Now Copy and past each object while in the active camera view.
-When you copy and past the object at the origin, it's pasted at the focal plane because it doesn't have any transforms.
-When you copy and paste that was added from the drag and drop, it's offset, it's transforms have been added to the camera focal plane transformation.
You may also want to review the section in the documentation about Relative coordinates.
-Cheers