Geometry Editing

Geometry Editing is the main mode of the arqtekt editor. In this mode you can create and edit objects, change their properties and geometry, and put a whole project together.

It has 4 views, the main one being the perspective view and the others being orthographic.

The main side panel is the Property Inspector, where the properties of the objects are changed. Each object type has its own properties.

Tools

Transform

Object transformation tools.

• Select: Default tool, click to select objects.
• Move (G): Tool to move objects with the gizmo.
• Rotate (R): Tool to rotate objects with the gizmo.
• Scale (S): Tool to stretch objects with the gizmo.

Mesh Editing

Geometry editors.

• Vertex Edit: Turns the vertex editor on and off.
• Edge Edit: Turns the edge editor on and off.
• Face Edit: Turns the face editor on and off.

With at least one of them on, a bar appears on the left edge of the viewport with the editing tools. Each one has a fixed place, and the ones that do not apply to the editors that are on stay disabled.

Ctrl+click (Cmd+click on Mac) on a vertex, edge or face selects the shortest path from the last selected element to it. Clicking another element next continues the path from where it stopped. Ctrl+drag still does box selection.

• Add Vertex (A): Creates a new vertex in the geometry.
• Loop Cut (Ctrl+R): Cuts a ring of edges around the geometry. Hovering an edge shows the rings evenly spaced, and the mouse wheel changes how many. A click locks the rings and the mouse slides them together along the edges; another click or Enter cuts, and Esc cuts at the center.
• Bevel Edges (Ctrl+B): Splits the edge in two, rounding the corner. With faces selected, it bevels all of their edges; with vertices, it starts beveling the vertices. While dragging, V bevels the vertices instead of the edges, C toggles the limit that prevents overlap, P inverts the profile (sinks in instead of rounding) and the mouse wheel, or + and -, changes the number of segments.
• Extrude (E): Pulls the selection outwards, creating new geometry. Alt+E (Option+E on Mac) opens the extrude menu under the cursor, with one letter per option: E extrudes the faces together along the average normal; F extrudes along the normals, each corner following the faces that touch it; I extrudes each face on its own, with its own sides; M does a manifold extrusion, where a side that lies in the plane of the neighboring face is merged into it: pulling the top of a cube just makes it taller, and pushing a strip down to the edge opens a clean channel.
• Inset Faces (I): Creates a smaller face inside the selected face.
• Knife (K): Cuts the mesh along a line drawn over it. Each click places a point, which snaps to the vertex or edge closest to the cursor, and it may land inside a face: the line runs to the border of every face it crosses. Enter or Space cuts, and Esc gives up; a panel in the viewport reminds you of the keys while the knife is active. The cut follows what you see on screen and only goes through visible faces; Z makes it go through the whole mesh, including the faces behind.
• To sphere (Alt+Shift+S, Option+Shift+S on Mac): With vertices, edges or faces selected, rounds the selection toward a sphere. Moving the mouse to the right raises the factor from 0 to 1; at 1 every vertex sits at the same distance from the center. Holding Ctrl moves in steps of 0.1, and a click or Enter confirms.

Proportional Editing (O): Not a tool but a mode that applies to moving, rotating and scaling. Turn it on and off with the three dots button in the top right corner of the viewport, next to maximize, which opens the editing options. When on, moving, rotating or scaling the selection brings the surrounding vertices along, less and less as they get farther, up to the edge of a radius. During the gesture, a dashed circle shows the radius around what is moving, and the mouse wheel or Page Up and Page Down make it bigger and smaller.

Correct Face Attributes: Also under the three dots, and on by default. When on, the UV of the vertices follows the movement: moving a vertex across the surface (sliding is the most common case) keeps the texture in place instead of dragging and stretching it along. It also works on extrude, inset and bevel: new faces get UVs without stretching, and the extrusion sides continue the texture of the wall they came from, in the same direction. The correction respects UV seams.

Discard Unmoved Operations: Also under the three dots, and on by default. Extrude and separate (V) create the new topology the moment they start and only then hand it to the drag. When on, an operation that ends without moving, cancelled with ESC or confirmed without moving, is left out of the history, with no overlapping vertices and no invisible step in undo. When off, it stays: that is how to duplicate vertices in place with extrude.

Selection Operations

With vertices, edges or faces selected, right-clicking the viewport opens the menu with these operations, and each one has its own shortcut:

• Fill Face (F): Creates a face connecting the selected vertices or edges. Use it to close a hole by choosing its outline, or to join two loose edges with a quad. The new face points to the same side as its neighbors.
• Dissolve (Ctrl+X, Cmd+X on Mac): Removes the selection without opening a hole, merging the surrounding faces into a single face with as many corners as it needs. What happens depends on the editor in use: faces become one face, each edge joins the two faces it separated, and each vertex disappears from inside the faces around it. The three options are also in the Delete menu.
• Bridge Edge Loops: With two edge loops selected (the borders of two holes, for example), creates the strip of faces that connects them. Loops of the same size come out as quads, and different sizes are stitched with triangles.
• Flip Normals (Alt+N, Option+N on Mac): Turns the selected faces to the other side. With no elements selected, flips the whole object.
• Slide (G twice): While moving, pressing G again makes the selection slide along its own edges, without changing the shape of the mesh. The side follows the mouse, and a click, G or Enter confirms.
• Hide (H): Removes the faces touched by the selection from the screen, so you can edit what was behind them. Shift+H hides everything else, and Alt+H (Option+H on Mac) shows everything again. What is hidden cannot be clicked or selected. While there are hidden faces, a bar at the top of the viewport shows how many and reveals them with one click; deselecting the object also shows everything again.

For selection, L adds everything connected to the element under the cursor, Ctrl+L (Cmd+L on Mac) extends the selection to everything connected to it, and Ctrl+= and Ctrl+- (Cmd on Mac) grow and shrink the selection by one ring of faces.

Creation

• Add Object: Opens the catalog to add primitives, lights and other object types.
• Add Modifier: Opens the catalog to add modifiers. Modifiers change the geometry of the objects placed inside them in the hierarchy.
• Add Asset: Opens the list of assets, objects from other projects or from this one, used here with no copy.

Sculpt Mode

This editor also has an editing submode called Sculpt, found in the More modes menu next to Artboard.

Sculpt mode has several tools to manipulate and deform the geometry, which push, smooth, inflate, flatten and crease the mesh.

• Draw (D): Pushes the region along the normal of the point where the stroke started, so the surface rises as a whole.
• Grab (G): Drags the vertices under the brush along with the cursor, keeping the relief they already had.
• Smooth (S): Moves each vertex closer to the average of its neighbors, taking out the irregularities.
• Inflate (I): Pushes each vertex along its own normal, thickening the region.
• Flatten (F): Moves the vertices towards the average plane of the affected area, leveling the surface.
• Pinch (P): Pulls the vertices sideways towards the center of the brush, thinning the stroke without sinking it.
• Crease (C): Does the same squeeze as pinch and also sinks along the normal, marking a groove.

The size, the strength and the edge softness of the brush are in a floating bar over the viewport, together with Invert Direction (X), which flips the way all the brushes work: draw starts digging, inflate starts deflating.

Menus

File

• New Project: Creates a new project.
• Open project...: Opens a project. If you are logged in, it opens the list of projects in your account. If you are not logged in, you can choose a .tnp file from your computer.
• Save: Saves the open project. If you are logged in, it forces the project to be saved. If you are not logged in, it saves the .tnp file of the project on your computer.
• Share: Creates a public view link for the project or adds collaborators to it.
• Import: Imports files from the computer into the project. These files can be 3D models, textures, materials and so on. A .tnp file from another project adds its objects, materials, textures and boards to the open project.
• Export: Exports the project to the computer, in two ways: For other tools, with the 3D models, textures and materials, or arqtekt file, which downloads the whole project as a .tnp file to import into another project or to create a new project from it.

Edit

• Copy, Cut and Paste.
• Duplicate: Creates a copy of the selected object.
• Rename: Renames the selected object.
• Select All: Selects every object.
• Delete: Deletes the selected object.

Geometry

• Convert to Triangles and Convert to Quads: Converts the topology of the geometry of the selected object.
• Merge Vertices: Welds the points that are practically in the same place.
• Recalculate Normals: Recalculates the normals of the faces of the selected object.

View

• Show Normals: Shows the direction each face points to.
• Show Vertices: Shows the vertices of the geometry.
• Show Wireframe: Shows the edges on top of the surface.
• X-Ray (Alt+Z): Makes the object translucent, to see and select what is behind it.