The Beginner style

New to 3D? The Beginner menu style puts a few big buttons on the first tab, so you can build things from shapes and holes before you learn to draw faces and push them up. Choose it in Settings (⌘,Ctrl+,) › ModelCraft › Menus, keys and mouse › Beginner. Every other style stays as it was; switch back at any time.

Build with shapes

1. Click a shape on the Make tab: Box, Cylinder, Sphere, Cone or Roof. Each is 20 mm across.
2. Click where it goes: on the ground, or on a face of another shape (it stands on that face). EscEsc stops.
3. Click a shape to select it, then Move, Rotate or Scale it. Type a size while you move or scale to be exact.

Make holes

A hole is a shape that cuts into the shapes it is grouped with.

• Drop a Box hole or a Round hole (they are grey), or select any shape and click Make it a hole. Make it solid turns a hole back into a shape.
• Place the hole where it should cut: through a shape, or partly into it.
• Select the shapes and the holes (⇧Shift+click adds one), then click Group. The holes are cut out and the result is one part. ⌘ZCtrl+Z takes it apart again.

With no hole in the selection, Group makes an ordinary group.

Line things up

Select two or more shapes, then use the align buttons: their arrows list Align left / Align centers (red) / Align right, the same along green (front, middle, back) and blue (bottoms, middles, tops). They line up with the outside of the whole selection. Drop to the ground sets each selected shape back on the ground.

Check it for printing

Check for 3D printing… on the Make tab checks the model and downloads it for your printer. See Get a model ready for 3D printing and Supports, wall thickness, hollowing and repair.

The other tabs

View has the camera: orbit, pan, zoom, zoom to everything, and the standard views. More tools has every other ModelCraft tool, small. With this style the right mouse button orbits and the middle button pans; the wheel zooms.

Related: Menus, keys and mouse · Groups and components