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  Aligned building / using the cell grid
 

"Aligned" building

You will notice that quite a lot of the standard objects have exactly the same dimensions as the size of the cells (=> press F10 to see the green grid lines) : 10 meters x 10 meters. You won't find a lot of objects with irregular dimensions (e.g 6.58 meters x 5.63 meters). Because building with objects with "nice dimensions" is a lot easier to align on these green grid lines.

flata2.rwx = 10x10 meters
landa.rwx = 10x10 meters
wall031.rwx = 4 meters long x 1 meter high
fw-walwina1.rwx = 5 meters long x 3 meters high
wall014h.rwx = 10 meters long x 5 meters high
floor50h.rwx =5 x 5 meters

These are some examples of standard objects and they are easy to use

Checking the alignment of objects ....

When an object is nicely aligned with the cell grid lines, you can see this in the object properties window of the object :

Location : X and Z-axis values are integers and the Y-as is on ground level.
Rotation : X Y and Z-axis values are zero : the object isn't rotated , but aligned.

The fact that the values are integers here , is because in this example, we use an object that covers an entire cell. A value of 115.50 indicates that the object will be at a distance of 50 cm from the grid line, (=1 arrow key position) , which is still very nicely aligned.

Always check if your objects are nicely aligned. If this is not the case, then all other objects that you will make won't be nicely aligned as well , because when you create a new object, you need to copy first from an object and it is always possible that this object isn't nicely aligned. And as a consequence , the whole building won't be nicely aligned. But of course it is not necessary that you build like that : you are free to build as you like to do.

When applying accurate positioning , you start moving the object, and you will see that the location of your object is changing , now keep moving the object until the X Y and Z axis become integers or until they get the value which is required.

If you need to to small corrections, then remember this about accurate positioning :

accurate moves move distance
1 move (= arrow keys or + or - key) 50cm
1 move + shift 5cm
1 move + shift + crtl 1cm
accurate rotations rotation percentage
1 rotation (pgup pgdn home end / * ) 15 percent
1 rotation + shift 5 percent
1 rotation + shift + crtl 1 percent

Grid lines

When you press F10 , you will see the green grid lines of the cells . When you right-click upon an object, you will be in the building mode, and you will see the yellow grid lines showing the size of the objects and you will see the X Y and Z axis lines of the object (green,blue and red arrows). And you will see that the green grid lines have turned into red grid lines for the cell upon which the selected object is located.

When you start moving the selected object with your arrow keys, you will notice that the red grid lines will appear around another cell, each time that the selected object is located above another cell.

Which other grid lines do you still have ? Zones are indicated with white grid lines, and selected scaled objects have orange grid lines.

 

Building a house on 1 cell.

Now we will show a small tutorial for building a house. We go to the world AWSchool and teleport to one of the practice areas in the world AWNewbie.

We select (=right-click) the object wall031.rwx and and we copy (=insert) the object, and a new object wall031.rwx will be created and selected at the same time, and this new object is always located at a distance of 1 arrow key move (=50cm) from the original object. Now we move this new object into the building area. When we look at the object properties of the object, and look at the values of the location of the X Y and Z axis, we will see that the object is not aligned . Now go to the upper line of the object properties, and we select the last icon "snap to grid". And you will see that the values of the location of the object have changed .

 

Now we change the object name into : floor15h.rwx. We move the object with the arrow keys into 1 corner of a cell.The dimensions of this floor object are 5x5 meter , so we need 4 floor objects to cover 1 cell. Now that we have a nicely aligned object, we can start copying this model. Press the INS(insert) key to copy the object , or you can use the "duplicate" icon in the object properties window. Now move the new floor object with the arrow keys besides the other floor object . Then create also the 3rd and 4th floor object and move those objects until you have 1 cell covered with 4 floor objects.

For each press on the arrow key the object will move 50cm , press 10x to move 5 meters, press 20x to move 10 meters. If you continue pressing the arrow key, then you will see that you can move the object very quickly.

You will now also see that there are no gaps between the 4 floor objects, because they are nicely aligned and the dimensions of 5x5 meters are easy to use. You will also see that the texture has a nice lay-out , there are no irregularities in the pattern of the texture, here we speak about "seamless textures".

We can start building the walls : we right-click upon one floor object and press Insert to make a copy, and we rename the model name into: "fw-walwina1.rwx". This is one of the Homepage models , you can view all homepage models in the world Uberpath , where you can view the models per homepage theme. For this model you will see the wall has 2 textures, 1 texture for the outside wall and 1 texture for the interior side.

We right-click and then we press upon the PageUp key or the PageDown key in order to rotate the object : press 12 times to make a rotation of 180 degrees (= 12 times 15 degrees), so that we see the interior wall , then press the arrow keys and bring the wall to the edge of the cell.

 

Now we will add the other walls too : right-click, press insert to make a copy and move the new object with your arrow keys besides the other one. Then repeat this for the other objects, and use the PageUp or PageDown to rotate : now press 6 times to make a rotation of 90 degrees. Continue until you have made a wall around the floor.

 

Now select the last object and rename this object into :"fw-waldora1.rwx". You will see now 1 wall with a door entrance. Then right-click (=select) this object and press insert (=copy). We also rename this new fw-waldora1.rwx object into : "fw-dorfrma1.rwx". And we have a doorframe. Now right-click (=select) this object and press 6x times on pageup or pagedown in order to make a rotation of 90 degrees (= 6 times 15 degrees). And we move the object with 1 arrow key forward click so that the doorframe matches with the door entrance. Now we can start with the roof.

Right-click (=select) the fw-walwina1 or the fw-waldora1 object, and press insert (=copy) and move this wall up with the + key of your numeric keyboard. The fw-walwina1 objects are 3 meters high, so we need to press 6 times the + key (= 6 times 50cm).

Now we can change the object name into : "fw-roofa1.rwx". We see that the object has another dimension : 10m x 5m. So there are only 2 roof objects needed to make the entire roof. Now move the roof object with the arrow keys backwards , so that it matches with the walls. Then copy the roof object and move the new roof object next to the other roof object.

Now we make the windows : right-click (=select) the fw-walwina1 objects , press insert (=copy) and rename the new object into "fw-windowa1.rwx". Then right-click (=select) this object and press 1 time the arrow key (=50cm) to bring the new window object forward , so that it matches with the window opening.

Now you can do the same for the other window openings. But you can also build the other windows just by copying the fw-windowa1 object and press the move and rotation keys and make them match into the other window openings.

Now we still need to make the door : right-click (=select) the fw-dorfrma1 object and press insert (=copy) , and rename this object into "fw-dorext1.rwx". If you have however selected the fw-waldora1 object , then you will have to rotate the object with 90 degrees (press 6 times the pageup or pagedown key).

Last step is match the door with the door opening : right-click (=select) upon the door , and now press upon the left arrow key, but you will see that the door isn't quite matching the door opening. So we will need to use accurate moves : press also the Shift-key and press 3 times the left arrow key and you will see that there is no gap anymore.

You can also learn how to open the door, but this is an action command, and will be another tutorial... (see tutorial 24 : move - rotate : rotating a hinge-door).

Undo selections

If you are makes accurate moves or accurate rotations with the shift-key and ctrl-key, for instance by selecting by mistake the ctrl-key and starting to rotate, you can still make this undone by going to the object properties window and select the first icon : "undo". However, if you deselect the active selection (e.g. by clicking upon another object), then it is too late. The building mode must still be active if you want to undo the wrong action.

Reset rotation

Another thing that can go wrong is that you are rotating a group of objects by mistake, as you can see upon this picture. If the object selection is still active , like upon this picture, they you can go to the object properties window and choose the "reset rotation" icon. The difference between this icon button and the undo button is that only the rotation will be undone, the undo button will undo also the moves.

Overlapping

On this picture you can see that these 2 objects are overlapping which eachother, in the 3d environment you will even see a "flashing animation" of the 2 object which are "in conflict" with eachother. We must avoid this overlapping, because it doesn't look nice, and there are some solutions :

1. right-click (=select) 1 object and press the SHIFT+CRTL key and move the object down with 1 cm , so that it doesn't overlap anymore, and you can barely see it because it is only 1cm.

2. resize the object with the scale command , so that they don't overlap anymore, or use another object with other dimensions.

3. put another object above the place that overlaps.