Sept 2004
Tech Tip
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This month we'll expound on the benefits of utilizing a very handy feature available to builders in CNW. It is called the "Cell Grid" and you can enable it on your screen by pressing the F10 key on your PC's keyboard. You can turn it off the same way by clicking F10. For laptop users (and as an alternative for PC users), you can enable Cell Grid by clicking "Show" in the top row of commands in the browser (between "Options" and "Login") then choose "Cell Grid" at the bottom of that drop-down menu. You may click "Cell Grid" again to turn it off. Shown below is a view (from above, looking straight down) of the Cell Grid enabled on a building lot in CNW world:
The green lines designate the 10 X 10 meter square "cells" that cover all of the building space available in a world. You can use this Cell Grid in ways that will help you keep objects more evenly spread across your building lot, by allowing you to see the contents of each individual cell. This can help you avoid the dreaded warning from CNW's infamous Building Inspector:
"Please try building somewhere else because this area is full."
Oh boy, don't we all love to see THAT message pop up on our chat screens while we're still working on something! "Arrrggggg…and I still wanted to add some flowers!!!!" heheh
If you right-click on an object in your field of view with the Cell Grid enabled, the browser will outline in red the cell in which that particular object resides. Shown below is an example:
To view every object in a particular cell, you simply hold down the Ctrl key while you right-click an object in that cell. Once again, the browser will outline that cell in red and it will also outline each object in that cell in yellow, to give you a general idea of the density of objects in that 10 X 10 meter area. Shown below are two examples:
By giving you this added way of sensing the 3D building environment of your lot, the Cell Grid can help you plan your build's layout ahead of time or redistribute objects with a minimum of disruption once you've already begun building. Remember this as well: The cell senses the center of each object so it will seem at first that many objects actually overlap into other cells or even seem like most of the object itself is in an adjoining cell. To know just where the center of an object lies, right-click on it and the center will be revealed at the intersection of the 3 pink axis (X, Y and Z) lines that show on the selected object