6 The Control Panel

The Control Panel displayed at the bottom of the screen provides modeling support features. These features will help you get the most from your Amapi 3D software.

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1. Organize the different elements of your scene into groups and sub-groups of objects, layers, or materials with the Scene Manager. Organizing scene elements is particularly useful when working on complex scenes.

2. The Display Hidden Lines command will help you visualize your objects as if they would be seen in the real world.

3. You can request a simplified display of the objects. Complex objects will be clearer and the display time will be shorter.

4. You can change the Working Plane.

5. Use the Perspective tool to toggle between perspective and orthographic views.

6. You can define the view with tools such as the Zoom (6e) and the View All (6d) and tools used to navigate around the scene (6a,b,c).

7. Change the center of rotation of your scene with the ViewPoint tool. It specifies the user point of view.

8. The Hide (8a) tool will make selected elements invisible. The Unhide (8b) command will make them visible again.

9. Use the Group (9a) tool to make different elements behave as one, until you Ungroup (9b) them.

10. Edit the Measurements of your objects. You can edit three types of measures with Amapi 3D: length, angle, and volume/surface/circumference.

11. Amapi 3D allows you to constrain cursor motion to a particular axis.

12. Magnetization allows you to choose if you want your cursor to be magnetized or not.

13. Use the Material Editor to assign a color to an object or to a material.

14. Get information on the current object with the Get Info command.

See chapter User Manual/ Modeling help tools/Control Panel for more details.

You can choose how to display the Control Panel: either have it displayed permanently or only when you ask it to be, thus freeing up more space for you to work in. If it is displayed only upon request, to display it, just drag the cursor at the bottom of the screen until the Control Panel pops up. (See chapter User Manual/Preferences/Interface/Control Panel.)