Using the Outline Editor

on this page: selecting objects | naming objects | editing fields | multiple windows

Find it: Choose Tools > Editors palette. Then click the Outline Editor button:

To use the Outline Editor, you'll need to understand the basics of the VRML file format. The complete VRML specification is found at http://vrml.sgi.com.

Also see The VRML 2.0 Handbook, by Jed Hartman and Josie Wernecke, published by Addison-Wesley.

Selecting Objects

When you select an object in the main window, the Outline Editor shows the selection, and vice versa. The Outline Editor uses a white highlight for the master (primary) selection and a gray highlight for secondary selections.

The View > Follow Primary Selection option is off by default. If you turn this option on, the Outline Editor automatically scrolls the outline text and opens the node hierarchy to the level necessary to view the current selection.

In some cases, clicking on a node selects an object higher up in the node hierarchy. For example, clicking on a Material node selects the object that contains the Material. Selecting a Shape node that is contained in a Transform node selects the whole Transform, not just the Shape.

Naming Objects

Another important use of the Outline Editor is to assign names to objects in the scene file. The master selection has a text box where you can enter a name for the node. Although it is not necessary to provide names for nodes that are instanced multiple times within a file, it is often useful to provide your own user-friendly names for each use. See The VRML 2.0 Handbook for examples of naming and reusing objects.

Use Edit > Name Primary Selection to open up the scene file to the level of the current selection in the main window so that you can name the object.

Editing Fields

To edit field values, click a field to reveal its values on the right. Click in the text box to make it active. A blinking cursor indicates that the text box is active. There is only one active text box at a time, regardless of whether it is used for field editing or naming.

If the text box is not currently active, the primary selection always has a naming box open so that you can easily assign a name to the selection. However, it you've already explictly opened the text box somewhere else and clicked inside it to make it active, the primary selection will not have this naming box open.

For single-value fields (beginning with SF), click the field to reveal its values. Click again on the field to hide the values.

For multiple-value fields (beginning with MF), click the field to reveal its values. Click a value to edit it. Use the keyboard as follows to move around within an MF field and edit it:

You can use the Undo and Redo commands when you're editing field values. For MF fields that have field types with multiple components, more than one value may be highlighted at a time. For example, MFVec3f values are edited in groups of three.

Note: Nodes appearing in italic type in the Outline Editor are for internal use only. You can't edit those nodes or create routes to or from them.

Opening Multiple Windows

You can open multiple windows on the same scene file (use Outline > New Outline). When you first call the Outline Editor in a given Cosmo Worlds session, it tries to open as many windows as were open in the layout that you saved, preserving their previous sizes and locations.

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