Dragging a Plane Interactively Using the Mouse

Dragging a plane interactively using the mouse

The " Drag " button (or the "D" keyboard shortcut) switches D3PLOT into cut-section plane dragging mode.
In this mode the cursor symbol changes to "Sect Drag", and the mouse buttons act as follows:

• Left mouse translates the plane in the normal (local Z ) direction.
• Middle mouse rotates the plane about the plane local X axis
• Right mouse rotates the plane about the plane local Y axis.

These operations are chosen because they are the most commonly used "drag" functions.

When planes are defined in multiple directions, the dragging changes that plane whose direction tab is currently selected on the panel.

The Options & Tuning button gives a more comprehensive plane dragging sub-menu.

You choose either Translate or Rotate, and in each case

• Left mouse translate along / rotates about the X axis
• Middle mouse ... ditto ... about the Y axis
• Right mouse ... ditto ... about the Z axis.

You can choose whether these translations / rotations use plane local or model global axis systems.

Cut section summary forces are shown as in the master panel and, if selected, will be updated as the plane moves.

Tuning Drag Performance

Dragging a cut section through a big model can be slow, especially if the current plotting mode shows contours and the current levels are in "automatic" mode.

The options in this panel allows you to alter the behaviour of cut sections when they are dragged with the mouse giving a trade-off between image appearance, contour accuracy and speed. The [?] buttons against each option give details of each setting.

These settings only apply during the "drag" process itself, once you release the mouse button to end the drag the image will be redrawn showing the missing graphical information.

The current settings can be saved as preferences in the oa_pref file by using the "Save settings" option.