Australia
Joined: Mar 6, 2024
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Working with walls and ceilings in 3D
OK so: I imagine most people aren't as obsessed with walls and ceilings for general use. However, I'm trying to render a commercial project where there's way more stuff on the walls and ceilings than the floor.
I really would like to be able to do this neatly in 3D mode. I'd like to be able to be in some kind of "flush to wall" mode and move things up and down and left and right. That's it. 4x cursor control, the objects stick to the wall. At the moment, it seems painful. Maybe I'm missing something. I need to put potentially 100s of panels on walls and it's killing me.
For one, the same modifier key affects both zooming and vertical positioning (opt). These need to be different modifiers, Can we make more use of shift and command and other combos?
Thanks for any feedback. Appreciate this community.
France
Joined: Nov 7, 2005
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Re: Working with walls and ceilings in 3D
Don't dream too much. Editing in 3D view can't be so handy because of the 3 dimensions to handle (it's the reason why this feature appeared optionally only in version 7). Nevertheless if you place the direction of the view perpendicularly to the wall, it should be ok to place things on a wall. Remember also that if you pressed Shift key after you pressed the mouse button, the objects will move only along X and Y axes. Shift is already used for multiple selection. It could be another key like E for Elevation but I don't really see the problem to use Alt key for zooming and moving vertically (note that under operating systems difference from macOS, it's the Ctrl key). It all depends on the place where you press the mouse button: on the selected object it will change its elevation, elsewhere it will zoom in the 3D view.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
Australia
Joined: Mar 6, 2024
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Re: Working with walls and ceilings in 3D
Thanks Puybaret. My idea was to engage "wall mode" where objects are forced to stay on the plane of the wall, and they can freely be dragged up/down/left/right with the mouse. I'm placing so many objects on walls and need to visualise how it looks. Rather than one picture frame for example I'm talking about hundreds of acoustic tiles. It takes a long time at the moment.
As for the second point, I realise how "opt" is working but it trips me up a lot. I'm constantly toggling the "aerial view centered on selection" as well. It's just not that easy moving around in the space, focusing on and moving objects in 3D mode.
Australia
Joined: Mar 6, 2024
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Re: Working with walls and ceilings in 3D
Thanks, looks promising, exactly what I need. Do you have instructions? I can't get it working, with the plugin installed I can no longer select objects in 3D mode let alone move them.
Italy
Joined: Nov 17, 2021
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Re: Working with walls and ceilings in 3D
You must use SweetHome3D 7.2 or later, and Pan 3D view plugin 4.1. From menu File>Preferences check the option "Select and edit in 3D view", then from menu View 3D>Pan 3D view settings select the drag mode that you like (I guess you want "smart").
