Figure 11: The "Slice" tool provides the real-life paradigm of a carving knife.
The "Slice" tool allows you to slice an object using an infinite plane. This tool uses another familiar real-world paradigm that artists are used to - the carving knife.
Object Name
You can give a meaningful name to the object being sliced using the "Object Name" text field, and pressing "Ok".
Slice position
By choosing from the set of toggle buttons, you can set the initial position of the knife to be to the left, right, top, bottom, front or back of the original object.
Knife Movement
You can move the knife by moving the cursor to the base of the arrow until a green box appears. Then move the knife while keeping the left mouse button pressed. You can rotate the knife by moving the cursor to the head of the arrow until a green box appears, and moving it with the left mouse button.
If you have the Transform tool up (see "Attribute - Transform"), you can set accurate location and rotation values for the knife.
Note: To activate the sensitivity of the manipulator, first move the cursor to the base of the arrow until a green box appears, then go the head of the arrow.
Hint: Use a combination of views to make your task easy. Use a 2D view (see "Options - New Viewer").
Flip Direction
By default the portion of the object along the direction of the arrow gets sliced off. If you choose "Flip Direction", the direction of slicing is reversed.
Continuous
If this option is on, the object gets changed with every slice of the knife. If this option is off, each slicing operation is done on the original object only. The latter lets you experiment with slice movements before committing.
Cap Surface
This turns the "healing" surface on or off.
Interactive
If "Interactive" is turned on, the object display changes instantly with every movement of the knife. If the toggle is turned off, you can position and rotate the knife anyway you want, and then choose "Slice" to update the operation.
Close
This closes the "Slice" tool. Since the tool does not allow you to perform other operations in the scene, you need to close the tool before you move on.