Frequently Asked Questions
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Okay, now that I've downloaded Design Intuition, what do I do?
The How to Draw topic should get you started. We've started writing a tutorials section, that offers step-by-step instructions for building a bookcase and for turning it into a simple Smart Object.
I want my documents to start up with a different scale, or measurement units, or view, or grid color, etc.
This is controlled by a Template. To change your default settings, change them in your default Template.
I want to draw the same object several times, but it's challenging to get the dimensions right. Am I missing something?
The simplest way to do this is to create one object that has all the right dimensions and to then duplicate it and move these duplicates into their various final positions. Design Intuition has several ways to duplicate objects and also provides a hotkey-and-drag combination to confine movement of objects horizontally or vertically.
This technique is useful for any project which involves many identical pieces: shelves, joists, studs, stairs, fence boards, fence posts.
I want to rescale all my objects, retaining their relative sizes. What's the trick?
The trick is to use the outermost group. First, click in the blank area of your drawing to deselect all objects. At the top of the Inspector window, click on the popup menu labeled Out, and then click on the top-most item in the menu that appears. Then, in the Objects inspector, in the Elements table, numerically edit each of the Width, Depth and Height in the following way. Double-click on the value to the right of the name of the element. Add these characters: "* 2" for doubling the size of each object (substitute your rescale factor for the "2" in the characters to the left). Hit return, and repeat for the other two dimensional elements. Voila! All of your objects have been rescaled.
This same "rescale by a factor" also works by double-clicking on the outermost group's various dimensions in the document view. If you use this second method, remember to change the view so you can rescale the third hidden dimension.
Does this rescaling trick work if one of my objects is a Smart Object?
Yep! Except for Smart Lumber, Smart Objects are, in this respect, exactly like any other object. For Smart Lumber, only the long dimensions will rescale; the other two dimensions are locked as constants and won't rescale.
Do I need to know algebra to use Design Intuition?
Nope. Only Object Authoring, creating exotic Smart Objects, requires a knowledge of algebra. If you want a Smart Object which isn't in the library, write me and ask me if I will design it for you. My answer will probably be, "Sure, that sounds like something quite a few people could use." Once I design it, it will automatically show up in your Library inspector when you download the next version of Design Intuition.
Moving an object sometimes under- or over-shoots the exact position I want. What am I doing wrong?
This is explained in the Error Messages page, for the "precision at current scale is finer than pixel size" error.
