Viewing Objects against the Ground

You can visually insert a plane at the ground level of your document, thus enabling you to know when you view your document the right way up.

Before you begin:
  • When you first access a document, the plane parallel or tangent to the bottom point of your document is considered to be the ground.
  • When Ground is activated, it is applied by default to all tabs open in your session.
  • The ground activation is stored in preferences files.
  1. In the power input box, type c:ground, and then press Enter.
    The ground plane is composed of:
    • A circular ground
    • A primary grid
    • A secondary grid
    • A smooth shadow of the current scene. This shadow is fixed and associated with an infinite virtual light source positioned along the normal of the object's bottom view.



    • (1) Primary grid
    • (2) Secondary grid
    • (3) Shadow

    Important:
    • The number of lines in the grids is fixed and does not depend on the zoom or on the size of the current scene.
    • The normal of the ground is the normal of the bottom view and it is always positioned under the scene.
  2. Resize the object, for example by zooming out.
    The ground is resized accordingly.
    Note: The ground's size depends on the scene's size.
  3. Look the scene from a different viewpoint.
    If the ground plane is visualized from below, it is not displayed anymore.
  4. To hide the ground, type c:ground again in the power input box.