Detailed Structure of Documents
Organizational Details of Your Design
The Details view is a complete list of every object and attribute in your design.
In version 1.2 and before, this list is in the inspectors window.
This list is arranged like an outline or hierarchy. Each object contains its attributes. Each group contains its objects, and at the very top of the list is a row representing the design document. In Design Intuition, this top-most object is called the Outermost Group.
To reveal the contents of any object or group, click on the triangle to its left.
The outermost group?
Every time you create a document, an object is created for you -- the outermost group. That's right. Every Design Intuition document is, itself, an object. All of the other objects you create are added to, and contained by, the outermost group.
The outermost group is exactly the size it needs to be to contain all the objects inside it. When you move one of those contained objects, the outermost group will grow and shrink to be exactly the size required. You can easily observe this:
- At the top of the Inspector window, click on the popup menu labeled Out, and then click on the top-most item in the menu that appears.
- In the Object inspector, click on the checkbox near the top labeled Show
- Create a few objects
- Notice while you do this, that the outermost group (and its dimensions) resizes
Selecting Objects, Dimensions and Object Faces
You can select any item in the object inspector. Doing so will select the corresponding item in the document view. And vice versa: selecting an item in the document view will select the corresponding item in the document inspector (this is true, regardless of whether or not the document inspector is currently showing).
The Details View makes it easy to select an object that lies behind or inside another. Simply click its entry in the Details View to select it in the document itself.
Since dimension attributes correspond to the dimensions drawn in the document view, and position coordinate attributes correspond to faces of an object, selecting an attribute in the Details view will select the corresponding part in your design. Try this:
- Create an object.
- Click the Details tab in the design window.
- Click the triangle next to the object you created. Its attributes appear.
- Click the Front attribute.
- Switch to the 2D view. Notice that the Front face of the object is highlighted.
Column of locks
Occasionally you may find it useful to lock an 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 details view. 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.
What else is the Details view good for?
You can:
- Select several items at a time (by holding down the Control key).
- Alter the value or expression of any attribute (dimension, position or authored).
- Alter the name of any object, group and even the document, itself.
You can change the name of an object or the value of an attribute, by double clicking on the right-hand column of an object or attribute and editing the value there. If you are editing an attribute, you will find relevant reading material in: numerical editing.
What are those (First, Before, After, Last) buttons for?
They have an effect only rarely: When two or more objects spacially intersect (share some three-dimensional space) and whose faces closest to you share the same plane (are coplanar).
Design Intuition will order all objects it draws according to the plane their closest face is in, relative to all the others. However, when the closest face on two or more objects are coplanar, Design Intuition has to resort to using the same ordering that it uses to list objects in the Details View. So, if you change the order in the Details View, the drawing will change accordingly. You can test this out easily for yourself:
- Open a new document.
- Select the Block tool.
- Create four overlapping rectangles, coloring each a different color, if you like (now they all intersect, and their nearest faces are coplanar).
- Don't change the view.
- Slide the X-Ray vision slider all the way to opaque.
- Open the Details View and select one of these objects.
- Click on the various buttons (First, Before, After, etc) and notice how the drawing changes.
What is As Elements?
When you check the checkbox labeled As Elements, attributes are organized and presented differently. Smart objects often contain authored attributes. Authored attributes are colored orange, to distinguish them. See the illustration above.
What else?
If you are in object authoring mode, you can display attribute values as expressions. You can also tell the object hierarchy to show attributes organized as both attributes and as elements. For the moment, elements consist of Faces and Dimensions.
