Level Editor/Panels/Snapping
The Snapping tab (bottom right) sets the grid and the snapping switches. Snapping decides where a point lands when you draw a shape, drag a vertex, move a brush or place an entity. All of these settings are remembered between sessions.
Settings
| Setting | Type | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grid Snapping | Check box | On | Placed points and drags snap to the grid. Off, what you place starts where the cursor hits. |
| Smart Guides | Check box | On | Drawing, moving and resizing snap to what is near, with red guides showing why. See below. |
| Smart Grid on Faces | Check box | On | A shape drawn on a slanted face snaps to a grid of the face's own, along its edges, and stands square to it. |
| Snap to Visible Geometry | Check box | On | A placed point snaps onto the corners, edge midpoints and edges of the brushes you can see, before the grid. |
| Grid Unit (m) | Meters, 0.0625 to 16 | 1 | The grid step at scale 0, the starting point the slider halves or doubles. |
| Grid step slider | -6 to +4 | 0 | Halves or doubles the grid step, one power of two per notch. The label above it shows the result (Grid step: 1 m). [ and ] do the same anywhere, as do Edit > Smaller Grid and Larger Grid. |
With the default unit of 1 m the step goes from 1/64 m up to 16 m. The same switches are in the Edit menu. The Rotate tool and the 2D rotate handles turn in 15 degree steps.
Smart guides
Smart guides work like the guides in Canva or Google Drawings. While you draw a box, move or resize something (in a 3D or 2D view), drag a vertex or place the ends of a clip line, the editor looks along each axis for the spot you most likely mean, within a few pixels of the cursor, snaps there and draws why in red:
- Lined up: a side or the center of what you drag lines up with a side or the center of something else, or with a vertex. A red line runs through both.
- Centerd: the margins on either side are equal, so what you drag sits in the middle of the face you draw on, or halfway between two neighbors. Two red dimension lines show the equal margins, in meters and in grid steps ("1.5 m (3)").
- Equal spacing: the gap to a neighbor equals the gap between that neighbor and the next, so a third pillar lands as far from the second as the second is from the first.
- Equal size: a box you draw or resize comes out the same size as a neighbor.
A guide wins over the grid when it fires; along an axis where nothing fires, the grid snaps as usual. When two guides are equally close, equal spacing wins.
Smart grid on faces
With a shape tool (Box, Cylinder, Prism, Stairs, Arch, Spiral Stairs, Spiral Tower, Plane), the face under the cursor shows the grid you would draw on, faded out past the face's edges.
- On a floor or a wall it is the ordinary world grid.
- On a slanted face (a ramp, a roof), or a level face whose edges are turned off the world axes (the top of a rotated block), the grid lies on the face itself, its lines along the face's edges, and a shape drawn there is built square to the face.
- Hold Alt as you start drawing to use the world grid instead.
- The Sphere tool always draws on the world grid.
Snap to visible geometry
A point you place snaps onto a corner, the middle of an edge, or an edge of a brush near the cursor, but only one you can actually see. A corner hidden behind the face you clicked is never picked, so a box started on a wall stays on that wall. In a 2D view everything counts, front or back.
Hold Ctrl while moving or extruding to snap flush against a face.