Object Inspector

All About the Currently Selected Object (or Objects)

The Objects Inspector gives you precise information and control over the currently selected object (or objects) in your document. When you create an object in the document window, the Objects Inspector opens.

The Object Inspector provides control over:

Control of Objects within a Group

Because a group is also an object, when your selected object is a group, you also have the following controls (see the picture above) over its contained objects:

Location and Size

The Object Inspector presents a table containing the location and size of the currently selected object. These numbers change live, as you edit your object in the document view. Watch the dimension values change as you resize or move an object.

Notice that, when you select one or more rows in this table, the corresponding face or dimension of your object will be selected in the design window.

You can directly edit any of these values by double-clicking on it. Simply enter the new value and hit Return. At this point, we highly recommend reading about numerical editing.

Column of locks

Occasionally you may find it useful to lock a dimension or position attribute's value or expression. Or you may encounter such a lock in a Smart Object. As a convenience, these locks are visible and alterable in the elements table. A word of warning: Locking a dimension's value can cause the 2D and 3D views to disagree unless you also alter the corresponding extent. This is explained in further detail in the help page regarding the Attributes inspector.

Name

When Design Intuition creates an object for you, it supplies a generic name. You may find it handy and useful to replace this name with something more descriptive and relevant. This name appears in your design drawing if you check the checkbox labeled Name. This name also appears in the Details View, in the right-hand column of the row for this object. You can change the name there, as well.

If the object you are altering happens to be the outermost group, changing the name of the object also changes the name of the design document.

Visibility

The Object inspector gives you some powerful control over how your objects look. You can make an object disappear altogether by unchecking the checkbox labeled Show. This has the same effect on your design as if you had deleted the object, except that the object still exists and its dimensions can still be made visible. This is a good thing to do when you want to print a part of your design uncluttered by one or more objects or groups. If the object is a group, unchecking this checkbox makes the group object invisible, but leaves the objects within the group still visible. Your outermost group is configured this way, by default. The group object that is created when you group objects is configured as visible, though.

You can also control the visibility of the outline of an object or of the fill color. If you turn both of these off, this is effectively the same as above.

All objects are created with names and dimensions. These can sometimes clutter your design with unnecessary information. You can turn these off with the view controls, but sometimes you may want more selective control. For example, most of the Smart Objects have the dimensions of contained objects turned invisible. This was done by selecting the outermost group (of the file for the Smart Object), and in the Grouped Objects area, uncheck the checkbox labeled Dimensions. So, if you drag a Smart Object into your design and want to see the dimensions of the pieces contained in that object, recheck this checkbox.

The visibility of names can be controlled in the same manner.

Color

When applying a color to a group, you have the option of having the color also applied to the objects contained in the group -- check the checkbox labeled Color Contained Objects. If the group contains another group, this second group's objects will also be affected. If the group is your design's outermost group, all objects in your design will be effected.

Translucency

The translucency of an object can give it a glass-like or plastic-like character. This is different from the translucency in the Controls window in that here, it applies to an object or a group, whereas in the Controls window, it applies to the design. This makes a difference when you save your design in the Library and later use it. When you use a Smart Object within another design, the view controls are all ignored.

When the tranlucency of a group is changed, all of the objects within the group are affected. The contained objects' translucency value is unchanged, just the translucency of their rendered images. You can use this feature to specifically make a group in the foreground translucent enough to see through it to whatever is behind it, without having to select each of its contained objects in turn.

Selectability

When your design becomes complex enough, you may unable to select certain objects by clicking on them in your design because other objects are "in the way." You can uncheck the checkbox labeled Selectable for each in-the-way object until you are able to work comfortably. Reregistrant, however, that you may want to select these now-unselectable objects at some future time.

The outermost group, by default, is configured as non-selectable because otherwise you wouldn't be able to select anything else in you design. Besides, it's easy to get to the outermost group another way -- by repeatedly clicking on the button labeled Select Containing Group (see below).

Changing your selection -- Moving around in your document's details

The Object inspector can also be used to move up or down within your design document's details, by selecting other "nearby" objects. The button labeled Select Containing Group moves you up in the details. If you repeatedly click on this button, eventually you will select the outermost group.

If the object you've selected is a group, the popup menu within the Grouped Objects area lets you select one of the objects contained by the currently selected group. This takes you down in the details.

Why are these controls here? It saves you the trouble of first switching to the Details View to select a different object, or of clicking on the object in the design window, which can be problematic when your design becomes complex enough.

 

Buy, now!