Digital Art Zone

Hi,

When I change the grid units (to feet or inches for example) the grid size seems exactly the same to me. Am I wrong about this?  Also, I would expect the snap tools by the view setting (in lower left) would be used to snap to the grid in some way but it doesn’t do this. Not sure how to use these two snap icons or what they’re for then.

Could someone go over the grid system for me? I looked at the manual but didn’t see anything that helpful.

Thanks

Not sure about the grid size, I have it set for the height of V4 and have never thought about snapping to it.

If I remember rightly Danny has covered the option in his set of Quick Start Tutorials -

http://www.cgdreams.co.uk/hexstarted.html

Personally I use the method Gary Miller of GeekAtPlay has shown when it comes to snapping (lesson 20) -

http://www.geekatplay.com/hexagontutorials/index0.php

Very good tuts! It seems you can use the guides to draw objects to the grid but after you create an object, if you need to reposition it, you must just eyeball it to the grid. That’s fine for most things though. Just didn’t know if I was missing something and wanted to be sure. (If I hold shift it snaps around but doesn’t go to grid when I tried it.)

Still have no clue what the “Scene Properties” on the right side do. I change the size to inches or whatever and I thought maybe this would effect the ruler guide used in the tut to create the cube, or something like that.  I first thought it changed the grid. No idea now. Anyone know more about it?

Anyway, thanks for the links.

I don’t think it effected the import or export size… Anyone want to guess what changing to inches or feet or miles or whatever effects so I can go and test to see if that is what it is? I thought it might change the entire grid itself… but no.

More2burn - 04 January 2013 04:47 AM

I don’t think it effected the import or export size… Anyone want to guess what changing to inches or feet or miles or whatever effects so I can go and test to see if that is what it is? I thought it might change the entire grid itself… but no.

It effects import sizes relative to the stage.

If you look inside an object file at the vertex data, you’ll see numbers like:
v 0.00124876 0.87346 0.02875

These define each vertex’s location in 3D space. All decimal figures are relative to “1”, and that “1” refers to the “units” you have set in preferences.

So if your units are set to millimeters, a given OBJ file will import at some given size. If you now change your units to centimeters and import a second copy of the same OBJ file, it will import that 2nd OBJ file 10 times as big as the first OBJ. If you now change your units to inches and import a 3rd copy of the OBJ file, it will load 25.4 times as big as the first OBJ and 2.54 times as big as the 2nd OBJ file.

And if you now change the units to miles… 

More2burn - 04 January 2013 04:47 AM

I don’t think it effected the import or export size… Anyone want to guess what changing to inches or feet or miles or whatever effects so I can go and test to see if that is what it is? I thought it might change the entire grid itself… but no.

Changing the “Scene -> Units” is only a reference for the scene units. It works in conjunction with the export option “unit of the file”, which by default is set to “None”(for .obj files). So changing the “scene -> Units” by default will have no effect at all on importing or exporting .obj files.

If in the export options, you set the “Unit of the file” to a specific unit type, then that can cause the import/export of that file type to be converted.
For example. If you have the “Scene-> units” set to mm, and the export option for “unit of the file” set to cm, on exporting a 10 unit cube, it will be exported as a 1 unit cube (10mm = 1cm).  It is similar on importing. If you have the export/import “unit of the file” set to mm and the “scene-> unit” set to cm, then a 10 unit sized cube will import as a 1 unit sized cube.

To try and answer some of your other questions.
The “scene-> units” does not affect the grid size. To change grid size go to “Edit -> Preference editor” -> “User interface-> Grid”

There is no snapping to grid. Hexagon uses the “Rulers”. To reset the rulers to world 0,0,0, make sure you can actually see the world 0,0,0 and click on (while no tool is active)  the “XYZ” button top left of main view. If the world 0,0,0 in not in current view, the rulers will be set to center of current view.
(Note: When using the “rulers”, while they are active, press the numpad “+/-” to increase or decrease the snap distance of the rulers.)

@ afreaginname and Steve athome

Thank you both for the information. It should help me a lot. I’m trying to learn what I can about Hex and this is something good to know.

Thanks again