Basic Concepts
A Quick Overview of Design Intuition
Drawing
Design Intuition is about creating working blueprint drawings. Start out by creating a new design document. At your disposal, now, are two tools for creating 3D objects: one for blocks and one for cylinders. Each object you create is automatically provided with dimensions. Objects can be resized, repositioned and manipulated in a variety of ways, described in the section called Drawing. Dimensions can be relocated, edited, and hidden. The Object Inspector provides a full set of controls to edit each object in detail. In addition to the object creation tools, you can also drag Smart Objects out of the Library inspector. Every action you do can be undone, and each undo can be undone. The resulting work can, of course, be saved.
Viewing
You can view your work in both two- and three-dimensional representations. Blueprints are, by definition, two-dimensional. All editing is done in 2D views. You have your choice of six views (top, bottom, left, right, front and back). Objects are created with full 3D data, which means that, when you switch views, your object will not need to be recreated for that view. You may, however, need to alter its size and position in this new view. Many other features of your drawing can easily be manipulated: scale and color being the two most impactful. You may open more than one window to view your design simultaneously from more than one view (eg, a 2D and a 3D view). Once your work is complete, you may Print one or more views for consulting while building the piece you designed.
Details
The structure of your document is made of three kinds of things: groups, objects and attributes. Groups contain objects. Objects contain attributes. Oh, and groups are objects, so they contain attributes, too. Attributes represent the positions and dimensions of their object. You can also add attributes, to represent anything you like. Your document always begins with an empty group, called the Outermost Group. As you create each object, it is added to the Outermost Group. If you select some objects and group them together, Design Intuition creates a new group and places your selected objects within it and then adds it to the Outermost Group.
Inspectors
Unlike many other programs which pop windows and dialogs up to ask you questions, in order to carry out your request, Design Intuition organizes everything into various inspectors, which never go away. The inspectors window contains a collection of control and information tabs, ranging in scope from broad to tiny. Each inspector concentrates on a specific kind of activity or data. The Details inspector, for example, displays all of the things mentioned in the preceding paragraph.
Preferences
All changes to preferences are stored (a) permanently, (b) the moment they're changed, and (c) affect all files immediately. That's what preferences are. We received several requests that the Preferences window be separated from the Inspectors, to reduce clutter and underscore their distinction. It's good for business to incorporate features requested by people who use Design Intuition.
Authoring
As you create more and more designs, you may want to re-use some of them in other, larger designs. Design Intuition makes this very easy: Simply save such a design using the Save in Library item in the File menu. Your design will be placed into the Library. Furthermore, Design Intuition also gives you some powerful tools for "programming" your designs, using algebraic formulas similar to those you might use in a spreadsheet.
