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Grouping & Gluing ?
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Grouping & Gluing ? // New Users
Post by fahembree // Feb 27, 2007, 7:54pm
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fahembree
Total Posts: 123
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I have been experimenting with nurbs and have question that really does not have anything to do with nurbs but, grouping, (not sure that is the correct term). The wheel is made up of about 45 objects (mostly because of the 36 small bolts). I used the command glue as sibling soI could rotate the entire wheel. Then I needed to paint all of the bolts a different dark color so I had to unglue all of them them one by one.
Unfortunately I did not use an orderly process to glue them together so it wasn't an easy process to do this. Now that I have them the color
I want I don't to repeat the process of re-gluing them again. I tried the group several objects together to create a level of detail but the parts did not end up in the same location and most of them disappeared from the screen and then ts crashed.
Is there a command similar to most cadd programs that you can just
simply just draw a selection window around objects to move or create a group? |
Post by TheWickedWitchOfTheWeb // Feb 28, 2007, 2:52am
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TheWickedWitchOfTheWeb
Total Posts: 858
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ctrl+left mouse button to drag a selection around the objects you want, hit the glue button, job done. |
Post by Chester Desmond // Feb 28, 2007, 5:13am
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Chester Desmond
Total Posts: 323
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just a note that once objects are in a group (or mass selected) you can use the paint-over tool to replace the surface (color etc) of all objects. ie in your case you could change all the bolts to a different color by clicking on one of them. |
Post by TomG // Feb 28, 2007, 11:02am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Group the bolts only (select all and make group as mentioned below). Then select that group and the wheel, and make a new group.
Now you can move into the group and choose either the wheel, or all the bolts. You can move down again into the bolts group and select individual bolts if you like.
However, at the first level down, you can now use Paint Object to paint the entire group of bolts. Or indeed you can just use Paint Over Existing Material right at the outside group (of wheel and group of bolts) now that they are a different material from the wheel - just click on one bolt, and they will change material.
HTH!
Tom |
Post by fahembree // Feb 28, 2007, 5:42pm
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fahembree
Total Posts: 123
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ctrl+left mouse button to drag a selection around the objects you want, hit the glue button, job done.
Thanks, Wow, it amazing how long I have been using TS and did not know that you could select mult objects with a shift-left mouse button. Don't every remember seeing that command in any documentation. I have one correction though, in ts 6.6 aftering doing this you can not use the glue icons as they are all grayed out. |
Post by fahembree // Feb 28, 2007, 6:05pm
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fahembree
Total Posts: 123
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ctrl+left mouse button to drag a selection around the objects you want, hit the glue button, job done.
Opps, the glue as child icon was grayed out but if I press on this grayed out menu I can then see that glue as sibling is selectable. But unfortunately when I used this icon to glue all the objects together there does does not appear to be a way to unglue them as unglue icon is always grayed out when this object is selected?? I guess I am just making this difficult
but I am just missing something here. |
Post by jamesmc // Feb 28, 2007, 6:38pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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You can always unglue in the scene editor. I do this when I bring an old project and forget how something is assembled.
The scene editor is also good for painting/modifying an object as well. If you name your objects, you can easily find it.
This method is also good for "borrowing" object from other projects you have done, but don't want to re-edit it. Click on the object in the scene editor, save it as an object and load it up in your other scene. Quite versatile. |
Post by fahembree // Feb 28, 2007, 6:51pm
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fahembree
Total Posts: 123
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You can always unglue in the scene editor. I do this when I bring an old project and forget how something is assembled.
The scene editor is also good for painting/modifying an object as well. If you name your objects, you can easily find it.
This method is also good for "borrowing" object from other projects you have done, but don't want to re-edit it. Click on the object in the scene editor, save it as an object and load it up in your other scene. Quite versatile.
I am using ts 6.6 so I dont think this is applicable. However I see that:
Opps, Opps,
I can now see that I can unglue them. I needed to use the down arrow key and then the unglue icon becomes usable. I have a software suggestion. It would be nice if you were able to control-left click and drag in the "Name" portion of the Object Info panel to select multi object names and then be able to right mouse click to get a pop up menu that would allow you to make additional selection, such as glue these selections, instead of having to glue them one by one from the screen. I don't have TS-7 so this suggestion or something similar may already be in TS-7. See attached image |
Post by Chester Desmond // Mar 1, 2007, 3:57am
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Chester Desmond
Total Posts: 323
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you can use the "split hierarchy into polyhedra" tool to unglue all the members of a group with one click. It dissolves all groupings at once, so if you have a hierarchical object with many subgroups be careful..but you can navigate to a specific subgroup and and split just that one if you want to.
Also, the layer system is extremely handy for complex objects because you can put each group on it's own layer, color code them if you wish, lock them, and\or hide layers to make selecting and working with groups easier.
The object info box (shown in your pic) allows very quick assignment of objects to layers. |
Post by TomG // Mar 1, 2007, 4:11am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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As everyone has noted, just a quick recap:
1. Go into the hierarchy (I use the arrow keys on the keyboard - down and up move through the layers, left and right move through objects on any given layer). Unglue will detach the selected object from the hierarchy (this can be a single object, or a whole group that was glued into the hierarchy).
2. To break the whole object rather than unglue one by one, Split Object Hierarchy does the job. It will though break up any sub-groups too, leaving you with nothing but single objects. So if you have sub groups you would like to maintain, follow point 1 above to remove those first.
3. Glue as Sibling and Glue as Child are different. Child makes one object "beneath" the other (same way a child is beneath the parent in a family tree). Sibling makes them all side-by-side on the same level (same as brothers and sisters appear all on the same level of a family tree). When you have a bunch of objects selected, you can only glue as sibling, ie put them all on the same level (there is nothing for them to be "children of" in that selection procedure - you have to have the parent selected and then say "now glue this next thing as its child" for that to work, so it is greyed out if you have multiple objects selected).
HTH!
Tom |
Post by fahembree // Mar 1, 2007, 6:19pm
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fahembree
Total Posts: 123
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Great information here and very thorough. Great responses, and I'm very appreciative of the help. |
Post by weaveribm // Mar 6, 2007, 1:19am
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weaveribm
Total Posts: 592
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Same here, thanks very much all!
Need to find out what layers are now though :)
Peter |
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