Lecture Notes

Return to ARC550 home page

• Important reminder: when models are built, they are built at full scale.
• Tear-away menus.
• If user is performing an operation that requires the use of the same tool many times, one can drag the menu onto the screen, and it will remain open.
• When a tool is being used, one can see more options for the given tool by looking at the tool options pallet, which will change based on the tool currently selected.
• While creating models, the user’s data can be interacted with in many different ways.
• For example, the way data is input can be based on the world coordinate system’s origin of 0,0,0, referred to FormZ as Absolute dimensions, or can be input based on the point first selected (such as the first click in creating a line) and the next point measured from the previous point, referred to in FormZ as Relative dimensions.
• The default is based on the world coordinate system, the global coordinate system.
• In the Prompts palette, the "A" box stands for Absolute, meaning all data entered will be relative to the global origin of (0,0,0). The default is that A is checked, meaning it is invoked. Unchecking the A box will switch to relative dimensioning.
• Object matrix.
• One can create open and closed 2-D objects or open and close 3-D objects.