I am not talking about the cute furry little character in the movie Gremlins. I am talking about the AutoCAD feature 3D gizmo. For those fans of the movie Gremlins, our AutoCAD 3D gizmo does not react adversely to water.
By default, gizmos are displayed automatically when you select an object or subobject in a view that has a 3D visual style. 3D gizmos allow you to Move, Rotate, and Scale 3D objects and subselect faces and edges using the new subselection filtering. The 3D gizmo provides a quick way to track along an axis with good visual feedback on direction of the Move/Rotate action. Those familiar with Autodesk 3ds max will recognize this functionality.
Below is an animated GIF video that demonstrates the ease afforded by the enhanced gizmo in Gator by simply selecting and using the right-click menu.
If you compare moving a box along the X axis, rotating it along the Y axis, and scaling it down to about half its size in AutoCAD 2009 and AutoCAD 2010 you can see the changes made and the time and steps reduced.
It’s simple but a great productivity enhancement to AutoCAD 3D users. Please give it a try and see what you think.
The tip and video was thanks to AutoCAD QA Mallika Rao.
Cheers,
Shaan
