Mode Select


These radiobuttons and optionmenus are used to set the editing mode of the GUI. The "Mode Select" radiobuttons are the master selection, and the other widgets specify sub-modes. The behavior in each of the three master modes is as follows:
 

Select

In the select mode, existing objects may be selected and their positions, dimensions and orientations varied.
 

Zoom

In the Zoom mode the orthogonal views may either be: To scale up ("zoom in"), click and drag M1 in any orthogonal view. A rectangle will be drawn having the pointer position where M1 was originally clicked and the current pointer position as opposite vertices (rubber-band selection). When M1 is released, the area enclosed by the rectangle is expanded to fill the orthogonal view. The other orthogonal views are scaled up by the same amount. If the rectangle does not have the same aspect ratio as the orthogonal view, the scaling factor is defined by the dimension that implies the least change in the size of the image.

The procedure for scaling down ("zooming out") is the same except that the "shift" key should be depressed when M1 is clicked. You do not need to keep the "shift" key depressed as you drag the mouse. The orthogonal views are scaled down so that the area curently filling the complete view now fills the rectangle delineated with the mouse.

The intent is that the zoom operation should not affect the rendered image. In general, although the size of the objects is changed, the distance of the objects from the camera is changed in the same proportion, so the object occupies the same area within the field of view of the camera. However, subtle changes in the operation of the shaders has been observed.

Create

In this mode a new object may be created. The type of the object is specified by the "Object Type" optionmenu.
When one of the options: Cuboid, Ellipsoid, Cylinder, Cone, SpotLight and PointLight is selected then an object of that type will be created when mouse-1 is used on any one of the orthogonal views. The remaining options; Freehand, Polygon and Bezier are experimental features that are intended to be fully supported in the next release.
 

Tool Select and Polygon Selection Mode

These options control the modelling of surfaces of Freehand objects, and are intended to be supported and documented in the next release.