Datasheet

tourinG the interFace

6. Click and drag up with your mouse. Notice that the options in the Command panel scroll

up, following the motion of your mouse. This is an example of a scrolling panel. This scroll-

ing action exposes the rest of the options in the lower portion of the Command panel.

Release the mouse button at any time once you’ve seen how this scrolling action works.

7. Place the cursor on a blank area again so that the Hand cursor displays. Then click and

drag down to view the Target and Free buttons under the Object Type bar.

8. You can also scroll the Command panel by rolling the wheel on your mouse or by drag-

ging the dark-gray slender vertical scroll bar on the right side of the Command panel. Try

both of these methods.

9. Another way to see more of the Command panel is to increase its width by dragging

the vertical border between the Command panel and the viewport. Position your cursor

along this edge, drag to the left, and expand the Command panel to two and then three

columns.

10. The advantage to having a two- or three-column Command panel is obvious—you can

see all the controls within the Command panel at once. The disadvantage is equally

apparent—the viewport area becomes much smaller. Drag the Command panel back to

one vertical column to give yourself the maximum amount of screen space. In a one-mon-

itor system, it’s better to learn how to scroll within the Command panel than to sacriﬁce

valuable viewport space.

In this exercise, you see that the entire set of options can be changed by clicking a single tool.

You can also see that the set of tools can extend beyond the bottom of the Command panel. You

can scroll the options up or down within the panel in several ways. This allows 3ds Max to offer

a wide variety of options within the limited space of your display.

The main toolbar also acts like a scrolling panel whenever a portion of the toolbar extends

beyond the screen area. For example, if your screen resolution is 1024 × 768, a portion of the

Rendering toolbar isn’t visible to the right of the screen. If you place the cursor on a blank area

of the main toolbar, it turns into a Hand cursor. You can then click and drag to the left to display

the additional tools.

When you clicked the Target button in step 4 of the preceding exercise, a set of options

appeared under a bar labeled Parameters. There are three other bars, labeled Depth of Field

Parameters, Object Type, and Name and Color. Notice the minus (–) sign to the far left of these

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