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 "sculpt 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. Sculpt - lets you quickly draw contours by holding the point addition mouse button [second_button] and pushing the contour outwards or inwards with the sculpt circle. Holding down [shift] as well lets you will pinch contours toward the center instead.
  3. Join - is similar to Sculpt, 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 sculpt circle. Holding [shift+third_button] lets you break apart contours.
  6. Warp - allows you to quickly correct bad regions of contour with the [second_button] or [third_button] by warping the points closest to the sculpt 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 sculpt circle (hold shift to go faster)
[q]          Increase size sculpt circle (hold shift to go faster)

[r]          Reduce current contour
[e]          Smooth current contour without moving existing points
[E]          Smooth current contour by moving points

[a]          Find next intersecting contour edge
[i]          Inverse points in current contour
[I]          Reorder points in current contout to start at selected point

[y]          Go to next largest value using find property (see: More Actions - find points/contours)
[Y]          Go to next smallest value using find property
[b]          Recalculate values of contours/points using find property and select the smallest
[B]          Recalculate values of contours/points using find property and select the largest

[ctrl+x]      Cut current contour
[ctrl+c]      Copy current contour
[ctrl+v]      Paste contour into current slice and object, centered on mouse
[ctrl+V]      Paste contour into current slice and object in same XY position

[space]        Copy current contour to current slice (use also [?])
[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 sculpt 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 sculpt tool can become sluggish for objects with numerous contours. To improve performance you should 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.

Under More Actions are a number of other options to sort, trasform, move, copy, expand and modify contours. contours
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 problem occurred and attach the model file you were using with enough information that I can replicate the error/crash.