Editor tools

INTERACT's editing tools are here to help you set up your simulation in Editor. You can find them in the scene view at the bottom right.

Measuring Distances

Measure a distance between two points

1. Ensure objects you are trying to do a measurement between are both physicalized.
2. Once the Ruler Tool is active, you can click on both points you'd like to measure.
3. You can cancel the measure by pressing the escape button.

Switching between metric and imperial

You can chose to measure distances in metric or imperial. To do so go to INTERACT > Preferences > Units > Length & Distance and set your preferred measure system.

Measure a distance between two circular shapes on the same plane

By measuring the distance between two circles with the Ruler, you will get:

• The distance between the two centers by considering them on the same plane (orthogonal projection)
• The height of this projection i.e. the difference in depth between the two circles.

Are they in the same plan?

This measuring tool will allow you to quickly check if certain circles are located on the same plane.

Measure using perpendicular constraint

When the first point of the measure is inside an edge. The second point will automatically snap to the point perpendicular to the edge if your mouse is close enough to it.

Measure Angles

1. Select the Protractor tool in the editor toolbar.

2. To measure an angle select two edges that are crossing each other. You can tell if two edge are crossing each others path by the presence of the preview when trying to select the second edge.

3. You can cancel the measure by pressing the escape button.

Measure Diameters

The caliper allows you to quickly measure the diameter of a physicalized object. In fact, by physicalizing your object you add a Mesh collider in each part of it, this will allow the tool to detect the shape and calculate the diameter.

1. Select the Caliper.
2. Go over the different circles to get their diameter.

The tool is not detecting the shape of your object

This issue may be caused by the fact that it is not allowed to access triangles/indices on the mesh. If you encounter this problem, double-check that your model has the Read/Write flag enabled on your Model tab.

Cross section

To ease model visualization, you can make a cross-section of your CAD model.

1. Create an empty Unity Gameobject using GameObject > Create empty
2. Add a component Cutting plane on this object.
3. Place and orient this gameObject as needed.

Note

To view the cross-section, materials need to use our custom shader Standard Triplanar with Cut. This is usually the case if you import your model through Pixyz plugin.

Tracking Distances during runtime

Tracking distances during runtime can be achieved with a special component called TrackingMeasure. Its purpose is to allow you to see in realtime the distance between two points in a scene.

1. Ensure that the objects you want to measure are physicalized.

2. Create an empty GameObject then add a TrackingMeasure component.

   We now have to tell the component the points between which we want to measure a distance.

3. Go over the TrackingMeasure component and click on the Pick button near the Start Object field. Now on the scene view, click on the first point you want to put measure anchor.

4. Do the same process for the End Object field.

You should now be able to see the measure between the two points you have selected.

You can also optionally specify a name to uniquely identify your measure in the scene.

OnLengthChanged

OnLengthChanged callback allows you to get notified each time the measure's size changes.