Creating Inline Objects
on this page: creating | putting an inline back into the scene
| changing the URL | bounding box fields
Use inline objects to break a large file into smaller pieces that can
be downloaded separately. An inline object contains the URL for
another file, either on the local system or anywhere else on the Web.
Some browsers display bounding boxes for inline objects until the
complete inline file is loaded. This technique allows users to navigate
through a world while they are waiting for all the pieces to load. For
complex files, inline objects are an efficient way to manage data for a
large number of objects.
Find it: Click the Inline Editor button on the Action
palette: 
To create an inline object, follow these steps:
-
In the main window, select the object that you want to make into an
inline object.
-
In the Inline Editor, click the Convert Master Selection to
Inline File button.
-
The File Selection dialog box appears. Type the complete path and
filename for the new inline file. VRML files usually end in the suffix .wrl.
When you click OK, the selected object is no longer shown
in the Outline Editor view of
the scene file. Instead, an Inline node is added to the file, with a
URL that refers to the inline object. When the scene is displayed,
there is no discernible difference between an inline object and any
other object in the file, unless you enable the Display Inline
as Bounding Box feature. On some browsers, when a large scene
is downloaded, inline objects are initially displayed as bounding
boxes, since they are fetched separately from the main file.
-
Check any of the three boxes if desired:
-
Do you want to display a bounding box in place of the inline
object?
-
Do you want to allow editing of the inline? If this
box is checked, you can edit the inline object or any of its children.
When editing is enabled, the Outline Editor's view of the file displays
the actual contents of the inline file. If this box is not checked, the
Outline Editor shows only a url field and the bounding box
fields of the Inline node, and you can't edit the contents of the
Inline object. In either case, when the file is saved, the inline
object in the file is replaced by a URL reference to a file containing
that object.
-
Do you want the inline's bounding box fields to be updated when
the object is saved? Be sure to uncheck this box if you specify
a bounding box explicitly in the file and you do not want these values
overridden.
To put an inline object back into the scene (so that it's part of the
main file again):
-
In the main window, select the inline object.
-
In the Inline Editor, click the Fold Inline Back into Scene
button.
The Inline node is removed from the file, and the object or group is
reinserted directly into the file.
You can change the URL for the inline object by clicking the Change
URL button to browse the files on your system. The file suffix for
VRML files is .wrl.
If you examine an Inline node using the Outline Editor, you'll see it
has two fields relating to the object's bounding box: bboxCenter
and bboxSize. Some browsers use these fields to optimize
rendering and downloading. These browsers can use the bounding box
fields to determine quickly whether the inline objects are in view. If
they aren't, the browser doesn't need to fetch the inline file at all.
You can specify your own bounding box values using the Outline Editor,
or you can allow Cosmo Worlds to fill in the fields for you.
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