Learn how you navigate the 3D scene of the Procedure Builder
General navigation
There are several ways users can navigate the scene:
- Movement: Using WASD the user can move around in the scene – W: forward; A: left; S: back; and D: right. Users can also use Q to move directly up, and E to move directly down. Using SHIFT+WASD will increase the movement speed allowing users to cover larger distances.
- Rotation: Holding the right-mouse button will rotate the view while keeping the same position. Holding ALT+right-mouse button will orbit the view around the current focus, enabling the user to rotate around an object while keeping the object in focus.
- Zoom: Using the scroll wheel users can zoom in and out of the current view.
Camera gizmo
The Procedure Builder also offers a camera gizmo located in the top-left corner, allowing users fine control over the view:
- Axis-aligned view: By clicking one of the cones (x, y, or z), the user is presented with an axis-aligned view of the scene.
- Perspective view: This is the normal view where the scene is rendered in normal perspective, where objects further away appear smaller.
- Orthographic view: This is a special view where the scene is rendered “flat” without any perspective. In this mode, rotation is disabled, always offering an axis-constraint view. This mode is very useful when aligning objects precisely. Users can switch between perspective and orthographic view by clicking the label under the camera gizmo, or by clicking the cube in the center of the gizmo.
- Info: Clicking the small light bulb will show a panel explaining how to navigate the scene.
Object focus
It is possible to get objects into focus by double-clicking the object in the Object panel or in the Steps panel. On subsequent double-clicks, the object will stay in focus but switching between two different zoom levels. The same object focus can be achieved by pressing the ´F´-key.
Object interaction
When hovering over an object in the Objects List, the correspondent instance is highlighted in the 3D scene for easy identification. The same happens when hovering over an object used as a Target in the Steps list, the correspondent instance is highlighted in the 3D scene for easy identification.
When an object is used in an Operation where the postion, rotation and/or scale can be adjusted (e.g. the "Position" of a "Grab and place" operation), a 3D gizmo allows the user to adjust these value easily:
- X-position: grab and drag the red arrow
- Y-position: grab and drag the green arrow
- Z-position: grab and drag the blue arrow
- X-rotation: grab and drag the red circle
- Y-rotation: grab and drag the green circle
- Z-rotation: grab and drag the blue circle
As an alternative to using the 3D gizmo, users can click-and-drag on the labels for e.g. x, y, and z position to adjust the values. Users have the following options to further customize how to change values:
- When pressing SHIFT while dragging the changes are bigger
- When pressing ALT while dragging the changes are smaller
- When pressing CTRL while dragging the changes are whole-numbers (integers)