Model View Object Edit

This dialog box contains many controls for changing how individual objects are displayed, as well as some features governing the overall model display. The top sections contains some general controls and the bottom section shows one out of several available panels with more specialized controls.
Line color
Fill color
Material
Points
Lines
Values
Clip
Move
Subsets
Meshing

General Controls

Select the current object with the Object spin box or the slider.

The Edit Each/All/On's option menu allows one to edit just the current object, all objects at once, or just the objects that are currently turned On. Features that can be edited in tandem for many objects include: point size, line width, material properties, and drawing data type and style. Line color can also be changed in tandem if a separate check box is selected.

The name of each object can be edited using the text edit box.

The numbered check boxes allow one to conveniently turn selected objects on and off. When an object is turned on, it becomes the current object. Only 48 checkboxes will be displayed here; if you have more objects, use the Edit - Object List menu entry to bring up a complete Object List window.

The Draw Data Type option selects which type of data to draw. You can select to draw contour data, mesh data or no data at all.

The Drawing Style option selects the drawing style. You can select between drawing points, lines, filled or filled outline.

To select which parameter group is displayed in the panel in the lower right part of the window, use the mouse to select one of the entries in the list box in the lower left. The controls in each group are listed below.

Line color

Use the Red, Green, and Blue sliders to adjust the line color of the current object. This also sets the fill color unless a separate color is selected in the Fill Color panel. The Transparency slider selects object transparency. Transparency is only an approximation and can easily generate artifacts. To minimize these artifacts, the back face of the object will not be displayed unless the Light Both Sides button is selected in the Material panel. Try it both ways to see which looks best.

By default, color changes will be applied to only one object in one model. Check Change multiple objects to modify more than one object at a time. The setting of the Edit combo box and the Edit radio buttons in the Model Edit window will then control which objects are changed together with the current object.

Fill color

Use the sliders to adjust the fill color of the current object. Select Use fill color to have this color used instead of the line color whenever the object is being displayed as filled. Select Use for spheres to have the fill color used just for display of spheres. This would allow you to have a surface of one color studded with spheres of another color at selected points.

Material

The Ambient slider adjusts ambient, or non-directional, light hitting the object. The Diffuse slider adjusts light hitting the object from the light source, which then diffuses in a direction-dependent way. The Shininess and Specularity sliders together adjust the shininess or highlights of the object.

Select Light Both Sides to have the object lit on both its outside and inside surfaces. If you just want to have the inside surface show up less dark than it does by default, try increasing the Ambient value and decreasing the Diffuse value to compensate.

Points

This panel controls the rendering of spheres that are displayed at individual points. The sphere radius can be incremented, decremented, or typed into the spin box. Note that setting the radius non-zero will cause points to be displayed at each point, even for open and closed contour objects. The quality of the spheres is controlled by the two quality spin boxes, one to set the quality for the particular object, and one to set the overall minimum quality for all objects. The display quality for an object is the maximum of its own quality setting and the global setting (range 1 - 4). The global setting can also be controlled by the g and G hot keys.

Lines

The 2D Line Width slider changes the line width used when drawing the model in image display windows in 3dmod. The 3D Line Width slider changes the line width used to draw draw the objects in the model view window. The Anti-alias rendering check box selects anti-alias rendering for lines. Lines will look smoother with this option on; however, some artifacts may be noticed. The Thicken current contour check box can be used to highlight the current contour by drawing it thicker than other contours. This will have an effect only for objects whose drawing style is Lines. This feature is most useful when using the third mouse button to select contours.

Values

This panel controls the display of values that have been stored in the model in one of two ways. Some programs will now store values for each contour or point using the fine-grained storage capabilities. The sda program stored surface density values in the mesh as the magnitude of the surface normals. The radio buttons at the top allow you to select whether to Show stored values or to Show normal magnitudes.

The Black and White sliders adjust the contrast range of the displayed values, and False color will display the values in false color rather than as an intensity modulation of the object's color. The intensity ramp can be inverted by setting the Black slider higher than the White one. The Turn off Low and High buttons can be used to turn off the drawing of contours or points whose stored values fall below the lower of the Black and White levels or above the higher of the two levels, respectively. This feature does not work for mesh displays.

Note that once the drawing of stored values is turned on, it is applied to model features drawn in the image display windows, if any.

Clip

These controls allow you to set up clipping planes for an individual object as well as global clipping planes that will be applied to all objects. The position and orientation of a plane is adjusted by holding down the Ctrl key and doing the same operations that would ordinarily move the model.

Use the Object and Global radio buttons to select whether to adjust global planes or planes for the current object. If you want the current object to be clipped only by its own planes and not by any global planes, turn on Skip global planes. The spin box allows you to select the current plane, the one that is adjusted by the remaining controls. Use Clipping plane ON to toggle the current clipping plane on or off.

The Reset button moves the plane back to its default location and orientation through the middle of the object or model. The Invert button inverts the direction of the clipping plane. Turn on Adjust all planes to operate on all of the object or global planes at once; these operations include moving, rotating, and turning on or off. This option is useful if you have set up several planes to enclose a box and want to shift or rotate the box as a unit.

Once the current plane is turned on, hold down the Ctrl key to move and rotate the plane instead of the model. Use the left mouse button or the arrow keys to move the plane, and the middle mouse button or the keypad keys to rotate the plane.

Up to 6 clipping planes may be defined for each object, as well as 6 global planes. However, the OpenGL implementation on your machine limits the total number of planes that can be applied to an object. There are guaranteed to be at least 6 but probably are only 6. If this limit comes into play, object planes count first toward the limit.

Move

This panel allows one to view orthogonal faces of the model. Each column of buttons will move by 90 degree rotations about one of the three axes. The Center on Object button will center the display on the current object.

Subsets

This panel allows one to view the current object, surface or contour of the model, if one is selected. Current Surface Only or Current Contour Only will show only the current surface or contour in the current object. Surface & Other Objects or Contour & Other Objects will show the current surface or contour in the current object, plus all other objects that are turned on.

Meshing

This panel allows the current object to be meshed if it is an open or closed object. The various controls correspond to options in Imodmesh; see that man page for more details. If the object has been meshed before, the parameters for that meshing will be used to set these controls. In addition, any parameters set through Imodmesh but not appearing here, such as X or Y limits or lists of Z values to not cap to, will still be applied when remeshing through this interface. The controls are: Pressing Make Mesh will start the meshing on a separate thread, so you can continue using the program before the mesh is done. When the mesh is done, the drawing of the object will be switched to Mesh and Fill if appropriate. The resolution mode will be switched to match the resolution of the mesh just computed. Note that the hot key "r" is used to switch between resolutions.

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