Move, rotate and resize

Every selected object carries one set of handles in the 3D view that does all three jobs at once: straight arrows to move it, curved arcs to rotate it, and small squares past the arrow tips to resize it. There is nothing to switch between - reach for whichever handle does what you want next. With a mouse, the pointer tells you which job a handle does as you hover it: a hand to move, a double arrow along the direction a square stretches, and a curved arrow on an arc to rotate. The Inspector’s Transform page shows the same three things as numbers, under the headings Position, Rotation and Size, one below another.

The three axes are colour-matched throughout: X (red) runs across the van, Y (green) runs up, and Z (blue) runs along it from the cab to the rear doors. The handles sit at the middle of the object and follow its own orientation, so on an object turned at an angle an arrow slides it along its own side rather than along the van. The arrows also turn round as you orbit, so each one always points towards you and never hides behind the object. The Position and Rotation figures are always measured along the van’s axes.

Move

What it is. Three straight coloured arrows out from the middle of the object, plus a grey ball at the centre where they meet.

What it does. Dragging an arrow slides the object along that axis only. Dragging the centre ball does something different and often quicker: it drops the object flat onto whatever is under the cursor - another object’s top, the van’s inner floor, or the ground outside - resting its underside on that surface, centred where you point. Rotation is untouched by a drop.

Options and limits. The drop only rests on surfaces that face upwards, so you cannot balance a cupboard on a wall; if the cursor points at nothing rest-able (the sky, say) the object simply holds still until you move back over something. It never rests on a cable or pipe run, on the van’s cab seats, or on the van’s own bodywork - the floor and the outside ground are the two van surfaces it recognises.

Snapping applies to a drop as well, sideways: with either snap switched on, an object dropped near a wall or beside another object lands flush against it rather than a few millimetres off. Only the sideways position is snapped - the height is what the drop itself decides, so resting something on a worktop never pulls it back down to the floor.

A group has the same centre ball, and it behaves the same way: the whole group is placed with its underside on the surface under the cursor and its bounding box centred where you point. It never rests on its own members. A group’s handles, and those of several objects selected together, follow the van’s axes rather than any one object’s.

Handles are held at a constant size on screen, so they stay usable when you zoom out and never grow so large that they block the objects behind them. Turn on the full-length guide lines in the Settings menu, under Editing, if you want to see what a drag is lining up with.

What it affects. Position only. A drag is one undo step, however far you moved.

Rotate

What it is. Three curved coloured arcs, one between each pair of arrows. Each arc turns the object about the axis of its own colour: the green arc, lying flat between the red and blue arrows, turns it about the vertical.

What it does. Dragging an arc turns the object about that axis, in whole steps of the current rotate step - 5 degrees at a time to start with - rather than by whatever angle you happen to stop on. Hold Shift while dragging if you want a free angle.

Options and limits. The snap uses the rotate step set on this page - change the step to 90 and a drag turns in quarter turns. On the web there is also a shortcut for the common case: pressing Space with an object selected turns it 90 degrees about the vertical axis, which is almost always what you want when a unit is facing the wrong wall.

The snap applies to the turn, not to the angle you end up at, so it keeps a square object square rather than squaring up one that is not. An object already sitting at an odd angle - from a design you drew before the snap existed, say - stays that many degrees off as you drag it, and Space turns it a relative 90 degrees for the same reason. To put it back on square, type the angle you want into the X, Y or Z row below, or use Reset to take the object back to no rotation at all.

What it affects. Rotation only. The object keeps its position and dimensions. A drag, and each click of an arrow, is one undo step.

Resize

What it is. A small square, in the arrow’s colour, just past the tip of each move arrow. With a mouse, hovering it turns the pointer into a double arrow along the way it stretches.

What it does. Dragging a square pushes that side of the object in or out along the arrow’s axis while the opposite side stays put - so pulling the front of a worktop forward extends it forward, rather than growing it symmetrically about its middle. Because the arrows point towards you, the side a square moves is the one facing you; orbit round to reach the other.

Options and limits. Components are parametric: resizing changes the shape that gets generated, it does not stretch a mesh. A longer worktop stays a worktop with the same edge profile. The one documented exception is a fused custom object, which scales as a single rigid body.

There is a floor of 1 mm and no upper limit. With a group selected the Size section shows a scale control, and an exact size where the group has one, covered in Grouping and van states.

What it affects. The object’s dimensions, and therefore its footprint in the van. Weight and cost do not rescale with it: they stay whatever the component’s figures say, unless you override them yourself on the BoM page.

Step size

What it is. The row of step chips at the top of each of the Position, Rotation and Size sections.

What it does. Sets how far one press of a - or + button moves the value.

Options and limits. Position and Size offer four sizes in whichever system you are working in - 10, 50, 100 and 250 mm in metric, 0.5, 2, 4 and 10 inches in imperial - and Rotation offers 5, 15, 45 and 90 degrees in both, angles being degrees either way. Each section remembers its own step. Switching between metric and imperial keeps the chip you had chosen, so a step you had set third from the left is still third from the left afterwards.

The rotate step does double duty: it is also the angle a drag on a rotation arc snaps to.

What it affects. Nothing on its own. It only changes what the next - / + press does.

Position

What it is. Three rows - X, Y and Z - under Position.

What it does. Shows where the object is, and lets you place it exactly. Type a figure to set the position outright, or press - / + to nudge it by the step size.

Options and limits. Typed values are in whatever units you are reading, metres or feet, and are stored to the nearest millimetre. Figures update live while you drag a handle, so the panel and the scene never disagree.

For an object inside a group, the figures are measured from the group rather than from the van - so moving the group as a whole leaves its members’ numbers unchanged.

What it affects. Position only.

Held at roof height

What it is. The Y row under Position, shown as a locked figure rather than a stepper, for an object mounted on the van’s roof - a pop-top.

What it does. Reads out the height the object has been placed at, and refuses to change it. A roof-mounted object rests on the roof, so its height is the van’s rather than yours: the figure follows the roof, and it moves on its own if you change the van’s dimensions.

Options and limits. X and Z are ordinary steppers, so you can still slide the object forward, back and across the roof - within the roof’s edge, which it is held inside. Dragging works the same way: a roof-mounted object’s handles have no vertical arrow and only the one flat arc, and under Rotation only the Y row is offered, because it always lies flat.

The lock is not the same as a raw material’s fixed thickness, which is a fact about the material you bought. This one is a fact about where the object is mounted.

What it affects. Nothing - it is a readout. The height changes only when the object moves along a roof that is not level, or when the van is resized.

Rotation

What it is. Three rows - X, Y and Z - under Rotation, in degrees.

What it does. Typing an angle sets the object’s rotation about that axis outright. The - / + buttons instead apply a turn relative to where the object already is, so pressing + repeatedly keeps turning in the same direction rather than folding back on itself past the vertical.

Options and limits. The readout is rounded to whole degrees.

What it affects. Rotation only.

Size

What it is. The rows under Size.

What it does. Sets the object’s dimensions exactly - type a figure, or step it by the step size.

Options and limits. These rows are labelled with the component’s own dimensions - Width, Height and Depth - not X, Y and Z, because they belong to the object rather than to the van. That distinction matters once something is rotated: a bench turned to face the side wall still grows along its own width when you change Width, whichever way it is pointing. The minimum is 1 mm and there is no maximum, so nothing stops you making an object bigger than the van; the van’s inner surfaces are a snapping aid, not a constraint.

What it affects. The object’s dimensions. See the note under Resize above about weight and cost.

Reset rotation

What it is. A Reset button at the foot of the Rotation section.

What it does. Returns the object to square, clearing rotation about all three axes at once.

Options and limits. Position and size are untouched - it only straightens the object up. It is undoable like anything else.

What it affects. Rotation only.

Reset size

What it is. A Reset button at the foot of the Size section.

What it does. Returns the object to the dimensions it had when you placed it - the catalogue component’s own defaults, or for a custom object, the size it was built at.

Options and limits. It resets all three dimensions together; there is no per-axis reset. It does not touch position or rotation.

What it affects. The object’s dimensions.

Related

• The Inspector - the panel these sections live in.
• Snapping - making a drag land flush instead of approximately.
• The Visuals settings - the guide lines drawn while you drag.
• Tutorial: Place your first component, in the app under Tutorials.