Overview

The Locator Handle provides three ways to move or rotate a Graphical Selection:

• dragging the linear, planar or rotation handles freehand with the mouse pointer

• aligning with points, P-points, P-lines or straight lines (edges) on other displayed Plant items

• typing in offset distance or angular displacement values

Aligning the Graphical Selection with points or lines on other displayed items

When aligning a Graphical Selection with other Plant items in the displayed model, you enter feature identification mode, where the mouse pointer is sensitive to finding features on the Design graphics. Features are points, straight lines (edges), P-points or P-lines. Points are located at vertices on the model, such as the corner of a box, and at the mid-point of lines. Lines are straight edges on the model (Design Aid graphics cannot be used as a feature).

Feature identification mode is turned on and off by selecting Feature Highlighting on the Selection menu, or by pressing the F key when the mouse pointer is over a 3D Model Editor View, and the Model Editor is active.

Some operations turn on feature identification mode temporarily to allow you to pick a feature. For example, Edit>Move Selection>Snap To Point. Once the required feature is identified, the mode reverts to its state before the command was actioned.

Aligning the Locator Handle with features in the model is described in Linear Movement Handle to Rotation Handle.

Automatic Scrolling

If the target location for a drag operation is outside of the 3D view, the mouse pointer can be moved to an edge of the view, where the view will pan automatically up, down, left or right according to the 3D view edge that the mouse pointer hits. The mouse pointer must move in order for the panning to continue. This may necessitate you making a small movement of the pointer near to the view edge to keep the pan operation going.

This technique for panning the view is appropriate for locating a target position that is just out of view.