Swapping the Privileged Plane

Swapping the Robot to a different privileged plane (XZ or YZ) is useful when running application commands that use manipulators which require working planes (for example, when creating planar patches or modifying control points). It is not useful when simply using the Select command.

Related Topics
Selecting Objects

  1. Open any product with a planar patch.

  2. Select Start > Shape > FreeStyle .

  3. Select the planar patch.

  4. Click Control Points in the Shape Modification toolbar.

    Control points appear on the patch.

  5. Point to a control point on the patch.

    Manipulators appear:

    Manipulators, by default, are oriented in the same plane as the privileged plane of the Robot, in the XY plane.

  6. In the Control Points dialog box, click Cancel to close the dialog box.

  7. Click anywhere in the geometry area and drag the Robot onto the patch to align it in the following direction:



  8. Drop the Robot onto the patch as follows then click Control Points once again:

    The Robot has now detected the orientation of the patch:

  9. Drag the Robot away from the patch and drop it into empty space (in other words, not on another object).

    The Robot keeps the same orientation:

  10. Point to the Robot and right-click to select Make VW the Privileged Plane.

    This means that you now want to orient the manipulators in the XZ plane of the Robot. Therefore, the manipulators are now located in the YZ plane:

    Warning: Do not be confused by the fact that the Robot's axes do not change: the Robot is reoriented to make the YZ the privileged plane, even though the axes on the Robot still indicate that the privileged plane is XY.