3d graphical view

From Emergent

This is the third, right-most panel on the window, displaying 3d views onto various objects including DataTable, Network, and a Virtual Environment.

It is organized into frames which are selected by the tabs at the top, allowing for multiple different views.

Each major viewed object in a frame has an associated control panel that shows up automatically in the middle edit panel of the window. This control panel allows you to configure various aspects of the 3d view. If multiple objects are present, each has its own separate control panel, each with a separate tab.

Manipulating the 3d View

There are different modes and controls for the 3d view located on the extreme right-hand side of the window. Drag the mouse over them to see what they do (a "tool tip" should pop up when the mouse hovers over the button).

To begin, you can experiment with the "hand" tool -- if you click the mouse and move it around, you'll see that you can manipulate the "camera view" into the 3d view/

Two key tips:

• Hold down Shift to move instead of rotate (while moving the mouse).
• Pressing the "home" icon restores the initial view (this is the first home one, not the blueprint guy -- the blueprint guy is for saving the current view state as the default view that the home button returns to.

At some point you'll discover that if you don't completely stop before lifting the mouse button, the view continues to rotate -- kind of mezmerizing -- apologies if you spend too much time doing this (we certainly have.. :)

If you have a scroll wheel, you'll see that it acts like a zoom. The same effect can be had with the Dolly wheel (the term is an analogy to a camera dolly that moves a camera through a scene in filming a movie).

The Rotx and Roty wheels rotate precisely around the x and y axes -- these are often more useful than the mouse-based rotation because they don't introduce off-angles.

The Flashlight button is very useful for zooming in on something of interest (especially for large complicated displays) -- after clicking on it, then click on an object in the view (NOTE: text doesn't work for this purpose). This button stays on until unclicked or another button is clicked, so you can do repeated exploration -- if you try to do other view manipulations while it is clicked, it wont' work.

Finally, for extra thrills, you can click the context menu on the background (right mouse button or ctrl+mouse on a Mac) and configure many interesting display options -- check out the different still draw styles, and the stereo options -- dig out those old red/green stereo glasses!