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Use Toolbars

The following is a guide for your work with toolbars.

• Use the toolbar Document to create/open/save documents.

• Use the "Open Doc" button of the toolbar Document to open a document with a stored scene (a file with the file name extension ".sa1"). 
• Or start from the next point to populate "Scene1" with objects. 
• If you closed "Scene1" (perhaps occasionally), click on the "New Doc" button to create a new blank scene "Scene2".

• Use the toolbar Factory to add new objects to the active scene.

• You can select an object type in the combo box NEW. Once an object type is selected, you can click on N button of the toolbar Factory to add the object to the active scene. 
• The created object appears both in the active window and in the combo box SCENE of the toolbar Scene. Once an object is selected in the combo box SCENE, it is also marked in the 3D view window by the inverse color of its edges.  

• Use the toolbar Scene to select objects and change their parameters.

• Open the combo box SCENE. You will see a drop down list of all objects of the active scene. Objects are listed in the sequence in which they was created. To distinguish objects, the name of each object consists of its consequent number and the type of the object. Select an object. The selected object appears in the edit window of the combo box SCENE. This edit control is "read only", you cannot edit the object name.  
• Once an object is selected, the PAR combo box becomes enabled. Now you can open the PAR combo box to select a parameter that you would like to change. 
• Once a parameter is selected, the Edit control (to the right from the PAR combo box) becomes enabled. It shows the value of the selected parameter.
• You can change the value in two ways: either you type a new value in the Edit control and then click on "E" button, or you click on one of two small arrows of the Spin control (to the right from the Edit control).

Manage the landscape background:

• Use buttons "Landscape Color" and "Spot Color" to set colors of the horizontal plane and random spots on it.
• Use "r" button to show/hide the reflection of the horizontal plane.
• Use "h" button to hide/show the landscape in the active 3D view window.

• Use the toolbar Location to change the location/orientation of the object selected in the combo box SCENE.

• Open the combo box CS (Coordinate System) and select a coordinate or an angle. 
• Once a coordinate or an angle is selected, the Edit control (to the right from the combo box CS) becomes enabled. It shows the value of the selected coordinate/angle. 
• You can change the value in two ways: either you type a new value in the Edit control and then click on "E" button, or you click on one of two small arrows of the Spin control (to the right from the Edit control).

• Use "F" button to mark the selected object as a "far" object. Then it will be excluded from the scene volume calculation and will be shown as a far background of the scene. However, you should also move it to the appropriate position far from the scene center.

• Use  the toolbar Parent to make a more complex setting of the object location. Keep in mind the following hierarchy of the coordinate systems. The shape of each object is defined (according to the object type and parameters) in its own coordinate system. The position/orientation of the own coordinate system of an object can be defined either relatively the scene or relatively another object (the "parent" object). The "parent" object can provide several reference coordinate systems for its "child" object. One of them is associated with the "parent" object itself -- it is the own coordinate system of the "parent". Other systems can be associated with some elements of the "parent" object (for example, with its faces).

• In the combo box REF CS, you can select a "parent" object and a reference coordinate system for the object that is selected in the combo box SCENE. 
• To approve the selection, you need to click on the button "P" that is situated to the right, immediately after the combo box REF CS.

• Use the toolbar Color to change the object color scheme by selecting points/edges/surface or a face group (a color zone) in the combo box COLOR and calling a color dialog box clicking on the button "C" of the toolbar Color.

• Use the toolbar Texture to apply a texture to the entire surface or to a face group (a color zone) that is selected in the combo box COLOR. If the texture is already applied, you can manage its parameters.

• If the texture is already applied, you can see its type in the Static control to the left of the combo box TEX.
• Open the combo box TEX to select the desired texture type (to apply a new texture, or to change the type of the existing one). You can select "File" to load the texture from a file. Or you can select one of several parametric texture types (anyone other than the "File" type). Also, you can select "none" to delete the existing texture. However, if you want a new texture to keep all the general parameters of the existed texture (like its size, its projection type, its position on the object's surface, etc.), it is better to change the texture type without the deletion of the old texture.

• Once a texture type is selected (and it differs from the type of the existing texture), the button "TT" becomes enabled. To approve the selection, you need to click on the button "TT" that is situated to the right from the combo box TEX. If the selected type is not the "File" type, the corresponding parametric texture will be  generated digitally. If the selected type is "File", the "Open Texture File" dialog will be called.
• In the "Open Texture File" dialog, you can open one of the standard texture files from the "Textures" folder (find it inside the installation folder), or change the folder and load a texture from any other picture file (of the BMP, GIF, or JPEG format) on your PC. Note that the "Open Texture File" dialog has its own "View Menu", open it and select "Thumbnails" to see pictures (instead of the file names) inside the selected folder.

• Once the texture is generated (or loaded), the button "TT" becomes disabled, and two combo boxes "TPAR" and "TCOL" become enabled. Now you can change the texture parameters and colors. The structure of the general and specific texture parameters are described in more details in the chapter Textures.
• Use the combo box TPAR, to select a parameter of the texture (see the description of the parameter in the Status bar). The value of the selected parameter is displayed in the Static control that is situated to the right of the combo box TPAR (actually, this "static" control is a "read only" Edit control).
• To change the parameter value, use the Spin control that is situated to the right of the Static control.

• Each parametric texture has its own palette -- a set of color components that are assigned to different elements of the texture (depending on the texture type, it can be color spots, bands, lines, and dots). To change the color of the color component, select the component in the combo box TCOL (see its description in the Status bar).
• Once the color component is selected in the combo box TCOL, its color appears in the Static control (to the right of the combo box), and the button "TC" becomes enabled. 
• To change the color of the selected color component, click on the "TC" button. Then the common "Color" dialog appears, and you will be able to set a new color.

• In addition, the Edit menu contains two useful commands "Copy Texture" and "Paste Texture" that are not represented in the toolbar Texture. 
• Once the face group (a color zone) is selected in the combo box COLOR, and a texture is already applied to this zone, you can open the Edit menu and see that the "Copy Texture" command is enabled. Use the "Copy Texture" command to copy the texture into the computer memory. Note that this command does not work if the entire "surface" is selected in the combo box COLOR. 
• If the texture was copied into the computer memory, you can apply this copy next time to any other color zone or to the entire surface of any other object of the same or of any other scene. The texture copy exists in the computer memory even if the source scene is already closed. However, when you copy another texture the old copy is deleted.
• To apply the texture copy, select the target object in the combo box SCENE (or keep the same object), then select its color zone (or the entire surface) in the combo box COLOR, open the Edit menu, and click on the command "Paste Texture".

• Use the toolbar Show to manage several filters of the active scene that show/hide edges, faces, shadows, etc.

• Use the toolbar 3D View to manage the view parameters in the active 3D view window: the viewpoint position, the zoom factor value, etc.

The toolbar Sun is described in the chapter "Your Solar Project"