Windows > Object Lister

Opens the Object Lister. The Object Lister provides a structured view of the components of the scene.

The Object Lister organizes your scene based on either modeling layers (By Layer), or in the following order: Canvases, Construction Entities, Group Nodes, followed by all other geometry (By Object). Choose which view you want from the Show menu.

When you first open the Object Lister, the hierarchy structure is closed. To open a section, click the icon. To expand all groups in a layer or object, -click its icon. To expand all layers or groups, click the icon in the Object Lister's menu bar. To collapse, click the corresponding icon.

To pick an object, curve, layer, selection of layers or other item in the Object Lister, click it with the . When ordering By Layer, clicking on a layer also makes it the construction layer.

Hold to pick several adjacent objects, or (Windows) or (Mac) to pick several non-adjacent objects.

Any objects picked in the scene can be easily located by clicking on the small up and down arrows.

If there are several items picked, each one will be scrolled to in turn in the direction you have picked. When the end of the list is reached, the display scrolls to the start.

Changing layer properties

To change the visibility of a layer, click the layer icon, or click a layer name with the to display a pull-down menu of layer operations (such as Visible, Symmetry, Assign, Insert New Layer, and so on), and choose Visible.
To change a layer color, hold the on the layer icon or click with the on a layer color swatch to open the layer color palette.
To display both the layer names and numbers (or only numbers), open the Preferences > General Preferences option window. Choose Modeling from the list on the left and set Modeling layers mode to Both (or Number for numbers only).
NoteOnly the layer name is editable (by double-clicking on it).

Layers showing both number and name

Grouping and re-arranging objects

Click an object (curve, surface, and so on) with the to display a pull-down menu containing the following choices:

Visible – Makes picked objects visible or invisible. When visible objects are picked, right-clicking shows the check mark turned on. When turning the check mark off, these objects become invisible in the view window, and are grayed out in the Object Lister.
Note
To avoid errors, you cannot pick invisible objects. To make an invisible object visible, right-click it and select Visible to turn on the check mark. The object becomes visible.
Group – Creates a new group node and places the picked objects inside.
Ungroup – Ungroups the objects from a selected node.
Place Inside – This choice becomes active only when right-clicking on a group node. It places the picked objects into this group node.
Insert Before, Insert After – Right-clicking on any object and selecting one of these options places the already picked object(s) before or after the specific object.
Note
These two choices are only active when it is possible to insert into the current position. They are grayed out if, for example, you try to insert geometry between group nodes.
Properties – Brings up the Information Window for the object.

In Layer mode, you can re-order layers or move objects between layers by using the to drag and drop.

In the same manner, you can also drag and drop a layer from the Object Lister into a category in the Layer Categories editor (Windows > Information > Layer Categories...).

Object lister menus

Show

By Layer

Shows all objects, geometry, cameras, planes and so on, grouped inside their geometry layer.

Note

If you set Modeling Layers mode to Number in your General Preferences, then the Object Lister displays the layer numbers instead of the layer names, for example, #1, #2, and so on

By Object

Lists all items in the following order.

Two envelops for Canvases and Construction Entities
Group nodes
All other geometry

Categories

All layers: All layers in the scene are shown in the object lister.
Reference layers: Only modeling layers that have been set to Reference are displayed in the Object Lister and scene.
Selected layers: Only modeling layers that have been picked are displayed in the Object Lister and scene. To pick layers, click their names. To pick a number of layers, -click to pick layers that are contiguous, or -click (Windows) or -click (Mac) to pick layers that are separated from each other.

Search and Pick

The Search & Pick field at the top right of the Object Lister window helps you dynamically sort and arrange objects. For example, if you have a large model, and want to group all the curves, type “curve” in this field, then press (Windows) or (Mac). All objects whose names start with “curve” (case insensitive) are picked in the Object Lister, as well as the modeling window. You can scroll up and down in the Object Lister to check the picked objects and can cross-check in the modeling window.

Hold the (Windows) or (Mac) key and click to unpick any curve object that is not required for the group. Then create a new group node or put the curve objects in an existing group node.

If a collapsed group node has a picked "curve" object, the group node expands, to make it easier to find the picked geometry.

You can also use the “*” character as a wildcard. For example, *shell* will find all objects whose names contain the string “shell”, and *30 will find all objects whose names end with “30”.

Object lister icons

Icon	Meaning
	Camera
	Camera eye
	Camera up
	Camera view
	Canvas
	Info button. Click to bring up information about the number of curves, surfaces, trimmed surfaces, and canvases
	Cloud
	Construction plane
	Curve on surface
	Curve
	DAG (directed acyclic graph) node
	Instance
	Light
	Mesh
	Null node
	Overlay plane
	Point
	Scanned data
	Shell
	Surface
	Target
	Texture projection
	Trimmed surface
	Unknown object
	Vector

Highlight colors

Objects and layers are highlighted in different colors to indicate the following:

White - Selected object
Light green - Object with construction history
Light blue - Selected layer
Yellow - Construction layer
Brown - Reference layer (objects are not pickable but are snappable)
Dark blue - Inactive layer (objects are templated)

Option box

Embedded: Turn on this option to display the Object Lister as a collapsible window which appears as a narrow vertical tab against the left-hand-side of the main Alias window when not in use.

To open the Embedded Object Lister window, simply roll over its tab. The window stays open as long as the mouse cursor remains within its boundaries.

The window has two small icons on its tab. If you click the icon, the Object Lister window only opens or closes when you click its tab. Click the icon again to return the window to its original state. To close the window, click the close icon.

You can also resize the lister by dragging the striped triangle in its lower right corner.