Modeling
Visual styles and renders
Shade the model by class, material, line or see-through, colour it by rule status, and get a still render of the view.
Change the visual style
Choose View › Visual Style, or press:
| Key | Style | What it draws |
|---|---|---|
| ⌥1 | Shaded | Each element in its class colour. The default. |
| ⌥2 | Materials | Each element in its material, lit by the same sun and sky; an element with no material keeps its class colour. |
| ⌥3 | Hidden Line | White fill and dark edges. |
| ⌥4 | X-Ray | Everything see-through at about a third of its opacity, every edge showing. |
In X-Ray, rooms, slabs and the agent's changes show through the walls, and a click reaches a room behind a wall before the wall. What is selected or changed stays solid.
The style is kept for the app, not the project.
Colour by rule status
View › Colour By has three choices:
- Class (⌥5), the default.
- Rule Status (⌥6). Walls, columns and slabs whose middle in plan breaks a failing setback, and whatever rises above a failing height limit, fill in the danger colour; the rest are neutral grey, with a legend in the corner.
- Layer (⌥7). See Moving around the model.
Limit. Rules that measure the whole building (lot coverage, floor area ratio, density) mark no element.
Give elements materials
Elements carry materials from the model. Ask the agent to set or assign one: a catalog name such as Stucco, Clear glass, CMU or Oak is copied into the project. Glass draws see-through on a window only.
Watch changes build
Every change rises into the view from the ground up, as if drawn live: each changed element's edges draw on as glowing lines, then it fills in solid behind a light sweeping up it, storey by storey, roofs last. One element takes a quarter of a second; a whole building takes up to 3.5 seconds. A removal runs the other way, quicker. It plays for the agent's changes, your own edits, undo and redo, opening a project and imports, but never while you drag: the result plays once you let go.
To turn it off, open Settings › Appearance and clear Build animation; pick Fast beside it to halve the time. It is off when your Mac's Reduce Motion is on, unless you turn it on here.
To show the whole model rising from the ground, for a presentation or a screen recording, open the Command Palette (⌘K) and run Replay Build. The agent can replay it too.
Get a render
An agent on the control port can render the current view to a PNG file: a still in the Materials style, up to 4096 pixels a side, with smooth edges and the sun's shadows. The agent in the chat can render too, but only to look at the result itself: the picture is not shown in the chat or saved.
Limit. Renders have no ambient occlusion, no textures and no path tracing yet.