DESEDIT

Welcome to the DesEdit on-line manual.



Moving Things Around in DesEdit

In DesEdit, objects are moved or rotated by dragging them (while they are selected) with the left mouse button. The movement or rotation is constrained to any one of the three axes (X, Y, & Z), or to any pair of axes (XY, XZ, YZ). In general, the objects are moved along or rotated about the X & Z axes with the horizontal movement of the mouse, and along or about the Y axis with the vertical movement of the mouse. The only exception to this rule in when the axis constraint is XZ -- in which case, the Z-component of the drag is controlled by the vertical movement of the mouse.

To move or rotate cubes, ensure that DesEdit is in cube selection mode, and the appropriate axis constraints are selected, and left-button drag the cubes by clicking and dragging on a line or vertex of the selection. To move or rotate verticies, ensure that DesEdit is in vertex selection mode, and the appropriate axis constraints are selected, and left-button drag the cubes by clicking and dragging on a vertex in the selection.

Translation is always (currently; this will change) relative to the world's coordinate system. Thus, if you constrain to the X-axis, and select and drag a cube, it will move along the X-axis in the direction of the mouse movement. Note that which direction along an axis an object is dragged depends on which angle the camera is pointed. For example, if the camera is pointed so that its orientation's Z-component is negative, moving the mouse to the left (with the X-axis drag constraint selected) will increase the selection's X-component.

Rotation is always (currently; this will change) relative the the world's coordinate system, but you can control about which point the selection is rotated. If the origin mode is set to 'World', the selected objects will be rotated about the world's origin. If the origin mode is set to 'Object', the selected objects will be rotated about the point defined by the center of the selection.

So, for example, to create a twisted corridor, one could perform the following steps:

1) Using the builder wizard, create a corridor (either square or octagonal, although for this example we will use square).
2) Switch to vertex selection mode.
3) Marquee-select all the verticies in the corridor except the four at the end you want to anchor.
4) Select Rotation, constrain to Z-axis, and origin mode 'Object'.
5) Rotate the selected verticies a small amount (if you wanted a 90-degree twist, and you had 10 cubes, you would have selected 8 sets of verticies, and would twist each one 9 degrees, approximately).
6) Deselect the four verticies closest to the anchored end (use the control key and marquee-select them).
7) Repeat from step 5 until you have deselected all the verticies.

You would now have a corridor with a 90-degree twist in it.

Picture of a twisted corridor


Next Section: Building Things in DesEdit.