Tips and Tricks

General

It is good practice to turn off the CVs for curves and surfaces if you don't need to use them. This helps to reduce clutter on your screen and makes your model easier to view. Uncheck the Cv/Hull checkbox in the Modeling Control Panel.

To turn on curve snap mode, hold the

and

(Windows) or

and

(Mac) keys.

To turn on magnet (point) snap mode, hold down the

(Windows) or

(Mac) key.

Use the middle mouse button to snap only in the horizontal direction. Use the right mouse button to snap only in the vertical direction.

If a CV (or edit point) is already picked, hold the

(Windows) or

(Mac) key and press the arrow keys to pick surrounding CVs (or edit points) one at a time.

You can speed up the display of a model with a lot of construction history by temporarily suspending construction history updates. Press and hold the H button at the end of the prompt line, and choose Suspend Rebuilds from the menu.

If construction history is suspended, the construction history button's H will have a line through it.

Press the left mouse button on the name of an object in the History View window to highlight the object in the modeling windows. Press the mouse button again to un-highlight it.

Instances take up less memory and disk space and display faster than real geometry.

In Object Edit > Insert, press

(Windows) or

(Mac) and click to snap to the halfway (in parametric distance) points between edit points/isoparametric curves.

The Object Edit > Edit Comment tool lets you attach a text file to an object in the scene.

Construction aids

If you constrained the vector origin to a curve or surface, you can click XYZ/GEOM to switch the manipulator orientation between global (XYZ) and geometry parameter space (GEOM).

If you click on the edge of a construction plane while Curve Snap is on, your movement is constrained to that plane.

Select a construction plane in the perspective window, then choose View > Look At to orient the plane flush to the view.

Curves

The first CV in the curve is shown as a square and the second as a "U" instead of a cross. This helps show the direction of the curve.

The Curves > New Curves > New Edit Point Curve tool is useful when you want to create a single span curve from two end points.

You can continue drawing curves between view windows. For example, click the first point in the Top window, click the second point in the Back window, and so on.

In the Curves > Line-arc tool, click the endpoint of a segment twice to make the next segment the same type (line or arc). For example, click the endpoint of a line segment twice to make the next segment a line also.

You can create a library of pre-built curves with Curves > Primitives > Sweeps.

You can use arc length snapping on curves (snap to the midpoint, 1/3, 1/4, and so on) by setting the Curve Snap Divisions preference, found in General Preferences (Modeling section). For example, setting this value to 2 gives you a "snappable" point (shown as a light blue line segment) halfway along the curve.

Surfaces

Custom versions of the Rail surface tool corresponding to the different Generation Curves and Rail Curves settings are included on the default shelves that ship with Alias.

In Surfaces > Boundary Surfaces > Square, after the surface appears, you can move a corner locator by dragging it.

To open the control window for an existing surface, choose Object Edit > Query Edit and click the surface.

If you have many surfaces to trim, you can select them all using a pick box before choosing the Trim surface tool.

In Surface Edit > Trim > Trim Surface, you can click anywhere inside the surface edges to specify an area to trim, keep or divide. You do not have to click a "visible" part of the surface (such as an isoparametric curve).

If you click an isoparametric curve or trim edge with the Rebuild curve tool, it will be rebuilt into a curve on surface. You can only rebuild these curves as degree 1 or 3 curves.

In Object Edit > Align > Align 2008, it may be easier to click an isoparametric curve close to the edge you want to align, rather than the edge itself. Make sure to click an isoparametric curve running in the same direction as the edge you want to align.

Curve Networks

You do not need to describe the entire model with a single curve network. Try using several curve networks for different parts of the model.

The New network tool will let you create a curve network from invalid curves (for example, curves that do not intersect), but the actual surfaces will not build until you edit the curves to create a valid network.

Avoid using many different areas of continuity in a single network. The more consistent the continuity requirements, the better the surfaces..

Meshes

You may want to adjust the Mesh Density (in the Quality section of the Modeling Control Panel) to a smaller value before opening your mesh model if the mesh is very large and will slow down interaction.

When hardware shading a mesh, use the Meshes slider (in the Transparency section of the Control Panel) to fade the mesh lines so that the shading can show through.

Evaluation/Visualization

When surfaces are partially transparent you can pick geometry "through" them. Open the options section of the Diagnostic Shading panel and turn up the Transparency setting.

Use the Page Up and Page Down keys to go to the Next and Previous bookmark respectively.