Shaping a piece
Click a piece in the scene, or its row in the Pieces list, and the Inspector down the right-hand side becomes its controls: a Selected: line saying what you picked, the Transform / Appearance switcher, the page you are on, and a row of actions at its foot - Move up and Move down, Duplicate and Delete, joined by Group, Ungroup or Remove from group when the selection calls for one. With nothing selected it reads Nothing selected and points you back at the list. It is the same shape as the van editor’s Inspector, pages, footer and all, and the handles in the 3D view work the same way.
Duplicate is written up at the end of this page. The footer’s other actions change the stack rather than the piece - its order, its grouping, what is in it - so they are on the Pieces list page, beside the rows they rearrange.
Two differences are worth knowing:
- Handles only appear on a single selection. Select two or more pieces and the scene shows outlines instead, and the panel swaps to the move-together rows described at the foot of this page.
- What you can do depends on what you picked. A solid can be moved, rotated and resized; a group and a reference ghost can be moved and rotated only, so they have no resize squares and no Size section. A group has no dimensions of its own to resize, and a ghost is a fixed snapshot of something you are lining up against.
A piece inside a group can be reached by unfolding the group in the Pieces list and selecting the member - the group opens up in the scene and the member becomes editable on its own. A nested group (a group inside a group) cannot be moved as one; the panel says so and suggests either editing a member or ungrouping the outer group.
The Appearance page carries the colour, texture and opacity controls - the same appearance controls as the van editor, applied per piece, so one fused object can mix materials and can be seen through in places. Select a group, or several pieces at once, and the page sets one finish across every basic solid in the selection.
The opacity slider is the one that makes glass possible: drop a piece to 30% and you look through it. See Making a window below for the three pieces it takes.
Panel pages
Section titled “Panel pages”What it is. The Transform / Appearance switcher at the top of the Inspector, under the Selected: line.
What it does. Chooses which of the two things the Inspector shows: where the selection is, which way it faces and how big it is, or what colour, texture and opacity it wears.
Options and limits. The pages on offer depend on what you have picked, and a page that has nothing to say is absent rather than empty:
- Transform appears whenever something is selected.
- Appearance appears only when the selection has a basic solid in it to finish: a solid, a group (where it sets every solid inside at once), or several pieces together. It is absent for a reference ghost, or a part brought in from the catalogue, on its own.
With only Transform on offer the switcher is not drawn at all. Clicking a piece lands you on its Transform; the page you last chose is remembered rather than reset, so picking a second piece while you are on Appearance keeps you there.
The colour and texture rows themselves are the same ones the van editor uses, and are written up under Appearance.
What it affects. What the Inspector shows. Nothing about the object.
What it is. The straight coloured arrows out from the middle of the selected piece, and the Position section of the panel.
What it does. Dragging an arrow slides the piece along that axis. The arrows follow the piece’s own orientation, and turn round as you orbit so each one points towards you.
Options and limits. There is no drop-onto-a-surface behaviour here and no snapping - the editor is a workbench, not the van, so pieces pass freely through one another. That is the point: overlapping is how Subtract and Intersect do anything.
What it affects. The piece’s position.
Rotate
Section titled “Rotate”What it is. The curved coloured arcs between the arrows, and the Rotation section of the panel.
What it does. Dragging an arc turns the piece about the axis of the arc’s colour.
Options and limits. A drag snaps to the current rotate step; hold Shift while dragging for a free angle. There is also a keyboard shortcut: Space turns the selected piece 90 degrees about the vertical axis.
What it affects. The piece’s rotation.
Resize
Section titled “Resize”What it is. The small square just past the tip of each arrow, and the Size section of the panel. Both are absent unless a single solid is selected.
What it does. Dragging a square pushes that side of the piece in or out while the opposite side stays put; the Size rows set the width, height and depth exactly.
Options and limits. Every shape resizes on all three axes independently, so the round shapes stretch as freely as the box does. A group has no Size section: size its members instead, or ungroup it.
What it affects. The piece’s dimensions, and therefore the shape of the fused result.
Step size
Section titled “Step size”What it is. The row of chips labelled Step at the top of each of the Position, Rotation and Size sections.
What it does. Sets how far one press of - or + moves the value.
Options and limits. Position and Size offer 10, 50, 100 and 250 mm in metric and 0.5, 2, 4 and 10 inches in imperial; Rotation offers 5, 15, 45 and 90 degrees whichever you are in. Each section keeps its own setting. The rotate step is also the angle a drag on an arc snaps to.
These are the same step settings as the van editor’s Inspector, so a step you choose in here is the step you find when you go back to your van.
What it affects. Nothing on its own.
Position
Section titled “Position”What it is. The three rows - X, Y, Z - under Position, colour-matched to the arrows.
What it does. Shows where the piece is and lets you place it exactly. Type a figure to set it, or
press - / + to nudge by the step size.
Options and limits. Values are read and typed in metres or feet, whichever you are using, and are stored to the nearest millimetre. The origin is the object’s own, marked by the small axis cross in the middle of the scene, not anything to do with the van.
With a group selected the same three rows move the whole group, and the figures are its bounding box’s centre.
What it affects. Position only.
Rotation
Section titled “Rotation”What it is. The three rows under Rotation, in degrees.
What it does. Typing an angle sets the piece’s rotation about that axis outright; the - / +
buttons apply a turn relative to where it already is, so pressing + repeatedly keeps turning the
same way instead of folding back on itself.
Options and limits. The readout is rounded to whole degrees.
What it affects. Rotation only.
What it is. The W, H and D rows under Size.
What it does. Sets the piece’s bounding dimensions exactly - type a figure, or step it.
Options and limits. The floor is 1 mm on each axis. The rows are the piece’s own width, height and depth, so a piece you have turned still grows along its own W when you change W.
Shrinking a piece can shrink an edge round or chamfer with it: both are capped at half the shortest side, so they follow the box down.
What it affects. The piece’s dimensions.
What it is. A Round row under the size rows, in the same units.
What it does. Rounds the piece’s edges to that radius - the box’s twelve edges, or the rim of a cylinder, cone or dome.
Options and limits. It is only offered on the four shapes whose edges are known: box, cylinder, cone and dome. Sphere and torus have no edges to round, and wedge and pyramid are not supported.
The value is clamped to half the shortest side, which is the largest round that still leaves a shape, and 0 is sharp - so setting it back to zero undoes the rounding. Round and Chamfer cannot both be on: setting one clears the other.
What it affects. The shape of that piece, and therefore of the fused object.
Chamfer
Section titled “Chamfer”What it is. The row below Round.
What it does. Cuts the same edges off flat instead of rounding them - one angled facet where the round would have been, set back by the amount you give.
Options and limits. Identical to Round in every respect - same four shapes, same clamp at half the shortest side, 0 for a sharp edge - and the two are mutually exclusive, so setting a chamfer zeroes any round you had.
What it affects. The shape of that piece.
Duplicate
Section titled “Duplicate”What it is. The Duplicate button at the foot of the Inspector.
What it does. Makes a copy of the selected solid, group or ghost, and selects the copy.
Options and limits. The copy lands in exactly the same place as the original, so it looks as though nothing happened until you move it - which is what the ready-selected copy and the position rows are for. It keeps the original’s combine mode. A copy of a piece that lives inside a group is added to that same group.
Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V does the same thing. The editor’s clipboard is its own: you cannot copy a piece in here and paste it into your van, or the other way round.
What it affects. Adds one piece or ghost. Undoable.
Move together
Section titled “Move together”What it is. The X, Y and Z rows shown when two or more things are selected, under Move
together. They have - and + buttons and no readout.
What it does. Nudges everything in the selection by the step size at once, in a single undo step, without grouping it. There is no readout because a loose selection has no one position to show.
Options and limits. It moves solids, groups and reference ghosts alike - whatever is selected. Use it to shuffle a half-built assembly clear of something without committing to a group; use Group - at the Inspector’s foot, or under the Pieces list - if you want the pieces to stay together from then on.
When the selection contains at least one basic solid, the Inspector’s Appearance page is on offer too, headed Appearance (all selected), and sets one colour, texture or opacity across all of them at once. The opacity slider there starts at 100% whenever the selected pieces do not all agree on a value - a slider has nowhere to show “mixed” - so a drag from it sets every selected piece to the value you leave it at.
What it affects. The position of everything selected.
Making a window
Section titled “Making a window”A hole and a pane are two different things, and a window is both. Three pieces, in this order down the Pieces list:
| # | Piece | Combine | Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The panel - the wall you are glazing | Add (it is the base) | as you want it, say 600 x 20 x 600 |
| 2 | The cutter - the shape of the hole | Subtract | a cylinder 300 across, 40 tall (twice the panel’s thickness) |
| 3 | The pane - the glass | Add, opacity ~30% | a cylinder 306 across, 22 tall |
Three things about it are worth knowing, because each of them is a way to get it wrong:
- The hole has to be real. Without the Subtract the panel’s material is still behind the pane and you are looking through glass at a wall. Opacity is a property of a surface that survives the combine, not a licence to see through whatever is in front of it - a see-through piece buried entirely inside a solid one shows nothing at all, because the Add swallowed it.
- Nothing shares a face with anything. The cutter is longer than the panel is thick so both its ends clear the panel’s faces; the pane is a few mm wider than the hole and a couple of mm thicker than the panel, so its rim is buried in solid material and its faces stand proud on both sides. A cutter that stops exactly on a face, or a pane that exactly fills its hole, is the usual cause of a flickering or speckled surface. The overlap costs nothing to look at, and it is how a real window is bonded into a panel anyway.
- The order is the order. Pieces combine down the list, so the cutter must sit above the pane. Put the pane first and the cutter goes through the glass too, and you are left with an honest hole.
One more thing you may notice: the inside of the hole wears the cutter’s colour, not the panel’s, because those faces were made by the cut. With the pane over them it rarely shows; if it does, give the cutter the panel’s colour.
Related
Section titled “Related”- The Pieces list - selecting, combining, grouping, reordering and deleting pieces.
- Appearance - the colour and texture controls, shared with the van editor.
- Move, rotate and resize - the same tools on a placed object.