View Manipulation
of the Drawing Area
Toggles the visibility of the indicated object type. For example, "surfaces" in the above picture is unselected; so no surfaces will be visible in either the "on" or "off" scene (discussed below), but they can still be selected using the visible objects. For example, when the pick limit (discussed above) is set to curve, a surface could still be selected by right clicking over one of its bounding curves.
There are three types of surface displays available:
There are four types of surface grid displays available:
There are five types of cutting plane displays available:
To create a Group, simply select the desired entities and hit the < Enter > in the Group Name text field or hit the button. If the Group name already exists, the entities will be added to the existing Group. To rename a Group, select the desired Group in the Group List editor, type the new name in the Group Name text field and hit < Enter > .
Multiple groups can be selected within the List Window by selecting the Group from the list and using the control and shift keys. All Groups can be selected using the Control-slash (ctrl - /) keystroke.
A status indicator has been added to the first column of the group name to indicate if the group is On, Off, or Deactive. The o symbol indicates that the group is On, x indicates the group is Off, and - indicates the group is Deactive.
Objects (points, curves, and surfaces) are placed in groups for a number of reasons. Groups are used to assign boundary conditions to surfaces for volume generation. Groups can also be used during geometry clean up by using activate and deactivate (see the tutorials).
Adds selected objects to the selected group. If no group is selected, a new group is created with the name given in the field to the right of the button. The selected objects can also be added to the selected group using the Ctrl-g hot key.
Removes the selected object from its respective group. If a group is selected, the group is removed. The objects are not deleted, only removed from the group. Once all objects have been removed from a particular group, the group name is removed from the list.
Disables the display of the selected group. The objects will no longer appear in either the on or off scene. The group must be reactivated before the grouped objects can be worked with again. NOTE: Although curves and points can be placed in groups, if the parent surface of a point or curve is active the point or curve will also be active.
Activates the display of the selected group. The objects in the group can now be seen and worked with again.
NOTE: Activate and Deactivate are most useful with large geometries where the large number of surfaces inhibits picking. All but the objects being worked with can be deactivated so that the surfaces being worked with can be turned on, off, and toggled without the other surfaces getting in the way. See the tutorials for examples.