Tutorials ModelCraft help Reference
ModelCraft settings
Pick the key style you know, make a trackpad orbit and pan without the camera buttons, and turn snapping and solid collisions on or off.
Written for ModelCraft 0.3. The same help is inside the app: press F1.
Open Settings with the gear in the app bar or ⌘,Ctrl+,. The first tab, ModelCraft, holds the settings that belong to this app; General holds the ones every CadCraft app shares (theme, toolbar, panels). ModelCraft's settings exist only in the app: you change them here, and this browser remembers them.
Controls: which keys and mouse buttons
Two key styles. Switch them here, with Keys: SketchUp / Keys: Blender at the bottom right of the view, or at the end of the toolbar's More menu:
- SketchUp style (the start): a letter picks a tool — LL line, RR rectangle, PP push/pull, MM move, QQ rotate, SS scale, GG make component. See Keys and mouse actions.
- Blender style: select first, then act on the selection straight away. GG moves it, RR rotates it and SS scales it from where the pointer is — no first click. While it moves, XX, YY or ZZ locks the red, green or blue axis, a typed number sets the distance (or degrees, or factor), and a click or ReturnEnter puts it down; EscEsc or a right-click puts it back. Then you are back in Select.
The full Blender-style list is in Keys and mouse actions. The tooltips on the toolbar and the start card follow the style you pick.
Scrolling: mouse wheel or trackpad
- Work it out (the start): ModelCraft watches the scrolling. Sideways or fine-grained scrolling, as a trackpad sends, orbits; whole wheel notches zoom.
- Mouse wheel: scrolling always zooms toward the pointer.
- Trackpad: swipe with two fingers to orbit, hold ⇧Shift and swipe to pan, pinch to zoom. You never need the Orbit, Pan or Zoom buttons.
A pinch zooms in every choice. If "Work it out" guesses wrong for your mouse or trackpad, pick the one you have.
Snapping
Snap to points, edges and axes (on at the start) pulls the pointer to endpoints, midpoints, edges, guides and the red, green and blue axes — see Inference. Turn it off when you want to place something freely near other geometry without it jumping. Faces, the ground and the axis locks still work with snapping off.
The Snap button at the bottom right of the view does the same for this session's work (it is saved too). In Blender style, ⇧ TabShift+Tab switches it.
Solids stop where they touch
Stop solids where they touch (on at the start) keeps a wall from being dragged through another wall. With Move (and GG, and paste-then-move with ⌘DCtrl+D) the selection slides up to the other solid and stops touching it; with Push/pull a face stops where it meets another solid. Resting on something and sliding along it are fine — only passing into the inside is stopped. Things that already overlap when you start can still be pulled apart.
To push something through on purpose, click Collide at the bottom right (or clear the setting), make the move, and click it again.
Corner indicator
What shows in the corner of the 3D view: View cube (the start; top right — click a face, edge or corner to look from there, drag it to orbit, drag its compass ring to turn the model), Axis icon (a small X, Y, Z marker at the bottom left that turns with the view: X red, Y green, Z blue) or None. See The view cube.