Drawing Tools Plugin Help


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This plugin provides a set of drawing tools which allows you to rapidly draw, modidy and erase contours. To use these tools make sure 3dmod is on "Model" mode, the "Drawing Tools" plugin window is open and you've selected the "Draw Mode" you wish to use. Notice in the Zap window that many of the tools use a red "deform circle", the size of which can be changed using mouse wheel or the keys [q] and [w].

List of Drawing Modes
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  1. Normal - lets you use normal contour drawing behavior.
  2. Deform - lets you quickly draw contours by holding the point addition mouse button [second_button] and pushing the contour outwards or inwards with the deform circle. Holding down [shift] as well lets you will pinch contours toward the center instead.
  3. Join - is similar to Deform, but also allows you to merge two contours by pushing one contour over another or split a contour by pushing a gap through the middle.
  4. Transform - allows you to move [second_button], scale [third_button], rotate [shift+second_button] or stretch [shift+third_button] the currently selected contour.
  5. Eraser - allows you to delete contours [second_button] or points [third_button] touching the deform circle. Holding [shift+third_button] lets you break apart contours.


Hot Key Summary
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[1]-[5]        Select cooresponding draw mode (see above)

[w]          Decrease size deform circle (hold shift to go faster)
[q]          Increase size deform circle (hold shift to go faster)

[r]          Reduce current contour
[e]          Smooth current contour

[a]          Find next contour which overlaps another
[i]          Inverse points in current contour
[I]          Reorder points in current contout to start at selected point

[ctrl+x]      Cut current contour
[ctrl+c]      Copy current contour
[ctrl+v]      Paste copied contour into current slice

[shift]        Hold Shift down to alter the behavior of certain draw modes


Tips
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Holding and dragging [shift+first_button] allows you to quickly scroll up and down the slices.

Be warned that the deform and join tool were designed for 2D closed contours and so I would not recommend using these tools with open or scattered contours which span multiple slices.

If you select a contour using the "transform" tool, you can copy it to nearby slices by simply scrolling to a different and mouse clicking [second_button]. In this way transform can be useful to quickly mark-up simple shapes.
The deform tool can become sluggish for objects with numerous contours. To improve performance you may consider adding an extra object and then use 'edit > object > move' to merge the contours into the desired object periodically.

Another way to improve performance can be to reduce contours. Use 'Reduce Contour' to reduce the current contours, by selectively removing points, or 'Reduce Object' to reduce ALL contours in the current object. Use 'Smooth Contour' to smooth the current contours, by adding points, or 'Smooth Object' to smooth ALL contours in the current object.
Reducing objects can often substantially reduce the number of points in the model, but be very careful you don't lose information in the process.

In 3dmod (without the drawing tool plugin) there are several useful drawing tools you might not know about:
  1. You can select multiple contours by holding [ctrl+first_button].
  2. You can delete points by holding [shift+third_button].
  3. You can transform selected contour(s) by toggling the Zap "contour transform mode" with [P] - this mode is similar to the "transform" drawing tool.


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This plugin was created by Andrew Noske (a.noske@imb.uq.edu.au).
If you encounter bugs please e-mail me before e-mailing the IMOD group (to reduce traffic).
In your e-mail please tell me exactly how and when the error/crash occurred and attach the model file you were using... enough information that I can replicate the error/crash.