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VIEW

Visualization commands change the way to display the information in the graphical window. They do not change any definition of the geometry or any other data.

Generally, they can be used within any other command without leaving it. When the visualization process finishes, the first command continues.

They can be accessed either from the top menu View or form the right mouse button.



Zoom



Zoom is used to change the visualized size of the objects without deforming them. This only enlarges or reduces the objects and changes the orthogonal perspective of the window.

Note: Instead of picking twice to begin and end the rectangle, it is possible to maintain the leftmouse pressed and move the cursor.



Rotate



There are various ways to make a rotation in order to change the graphical view of the geometry, without changing it.

Note: Instead of picking twice to begin and end the rotation, it is possible to maintain the leftmouse pressed and move the cursor.



Rotate screen axes

With this option, a dynamic rotation about the screen axes is made. Screen axes are defined as:

When entering this command, Z-axis is set by default and moving the mouse to the left or to the right will rotate the geometry around this axis. Picking the left mouse changes the axis. To leave this function, use escape (see section Escape).

To change the axes is also possible by entering the letters x, y or z in the command line.

To move the geometry by a fixed angle, enter the number of degrees, positive or negative, in the command line.



Rotate object axes

With this option, a dynamic rotation about the object axes is made. Object axes are the global axes in the position they are in that particular moment. i.e. the axes currently drawn in the graphical window.

When entering this command, Z-axis is set by default and moving the mouse to the left or to the right will rotate the geometry around this axis. Picking the left mouse changes the axes. To leave this function, use escape (see section Escape).

To change the axes is also possible by entering the letters x, y or z in the command line.

To move the geometry by a fixed angle, enter the number of degrees, positive or negative, in the command line.



Rotate trackball

With this option, a dynamic rotation is made, resembling a trackball device. It means that when picking over a geometry point with the left mouse and moving the mouse, the geometric point tries to follow the mouse pointer. This can be imagined as a ball over the graphical window which is moved with the mouse.

The left mouse button can be pressed several times to connect and disconnect the movement. To leave this function, use escape (see section Escape).



Rotate angle

The new position of the geometry after the rotation can be defined as the direction orthogonal to the screen via a pair of angles:

  1. The angle in the plane XY starting from the X-axis.
  2. The elevation angle from the XY plane.

As an example, the initial view (orthogonal to the Z-axis and with the X-axis horizontal) can be obtained with:

rotate angle 270 90



Rotate points

This option appears only in the right side commands menu.

The new position of the geometry after the rotation can be defined as the direction orthogonal to the screen via a pair of points:

  1. The target point, the point to look at.
  2. The view point, the point to look from.



Rotate center

The default center of rotation is defined approximately in the center of the geometry.

If it is desired to change this center, use this command and enter a point (see section Point definition). This new rotation center will be maintained until the next zoom frame (see section Zoom).



Rotate original view

This option, that appears only in the graphical pop-up menu, changes the view to the original one: screen orthogonal to the Z-axis with the X-axis lying horizontally and pointing to the right.



Pan





Redraw



This command redraws the geometrical model in the graphical window. For those machines that include overlays, all the layers that stay underneath are not affected, so the redraw goes faster and the underneath drawings remain untouched.



Render

By using this option, the way of viewing the model changes. There are four options:

Note: The rendering of a volume mesh requires the option View boundaries (see section View boundaries).

Note: Quality of visualization is controlled via preferences (see section Preferences).

Note: The light vector direction can be changed interactively with the menu option Change Light Vector inside the menu Utilities (see section Change Light Vector).



Label

With this option, the labels of the entities are drawn or not. It is possible to select some entities or to apply this option to all entities viewed in the graphical window. To select some entities, choose select before applying on the Points, Lines, Surfaces or Volumes. Then, select entities in the usual way (see section Entities selection). Options are:



Entities

With this option, it is possible to choose some of the points, lines, surfaces or volumes to be drawn. It is useful to make drawing faster or clearer in some instances.

Note: this option is only available in the right buttons menu. (see section USER INTERFACE)



Layers





Layers are a way to split a complex drawing into separate pieces. The idea is that any entity can belong to one layer or to none (an entity cannot belong to more than one layer). Then, it is possible to view only some layers and not others. It is also useful to easily select entities in the graphical window.



Layers window operations

Commands related to layers are:

Important: The mesh generation does not depend on the state of the layers when the generation is performed (see section Layers). All layers are meshed and every node and element will be assigned to the layer where the original geometrical entity was. The only exception to this rule is for the case of frozen layer if the option No mesh frozen layers is selected.



Save/Read View

These two options permits to save the actual view configuration into a file. Then, that configuration can be loaded using the Read View command.



Background Image

An image can be used as background of GiD for visualization purposes (supported image formats are .bmp and .ppm). There are the following options:



Multiple windows

Command Multiple windows permits to have several views of the same project. Different views can be displayed inside the program main window or in supplementary windows.




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