Import and Export Options

• Import Previous Settings: If you have a previous version of Vortex Studio Editor installed on your computer, click this button to quickly import the options from that version.

• Import...: Selects a previous saved set of options (as a *.vxeditor file) to apply to Vortex Studio Editor.

• Export...: Saves the current options as a *.vxeditor file.

Grid Options

The Grid dialog allows you to customize how the grid appears in the 3D View (including turning it off altogether).

It also provides special settings that allow you to set up the grid as a terrain for performing simulations in the Assembly, Mechanism and Scene editors.

You can access the Grid options by right-clicking in the 3D View and selecting Grid....

Customizing the Grid

Use the following procedure to customize how the grid appears in the 3D View:

1. From the right-click menu, select Grid....

   The Grid Options window appears.
   

2. Make sure that Use Grid option is enabled.

3. In the Size section, enter the Length and width of the Grid in meters.

   • Length and width= 200 meters

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   • Length and width= 50 meters

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2. Define the a grid line per distance. For example, if you want to have a grid line every 5 meters, enter 5 and if you want a grid line every 20 meters, enter 20 as the Grid lines every value.

   • Grid lines every= 5

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3. Set the Subdivisions value of a grid, which is the number of divisions inside a grid.

   • Subdivisions= 2:

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4. To set the color and its transparency of the Grid lines, and Subdivision lines, click the specific color chip and pick what you want from the Select Color window.

   • The color of the grid lines is set to yellow:

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   • The color of the subdivision lines is set to red:

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5. To set the material for the grid, make sure the Use grid as terrain option is enabled, then select a material from the drop-down list.

6. You can change the position of the grid by using the available Transform tools. Pressing Reset places the grid back to the origin.

Application and Add-ons Options

You can change the following application and add-on (including plugins and libraries) settings through the Options window.

To access the Options window, click Options from the Vortex® Studio Editor Home page.

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Display

This tab offers specialized options for:

• Anti-Aliasing: A computer graphics technique used to remove jagged and pixelated edges from images. Select the type of anti-aliasing you want to apply to the scene.

  • None: Applies no anti-aliasing.

  • FXAA (best performance): Fast Approximation Anti-Aliasing. This effect adds a lower quality anti-aliasing that uses fewer system resources than SMAA.

  • MSAA: Multisample anti-aliasing. The sampling rates you can select are 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x. A 2x rate means that two samples per pixel are used to compute an average pixel that is ultimately displayed. The higher the number of samples, the higher the quality of the anti-aliasing and thus the cost to performance.

  • SMAA (best quality): Enhanced Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing. Applies a high quality anti-aliasing to the scene, requiring more system resources than FXAA.

  • SMAA S2x: This method combines SMAA with MSAA 4x.

  NoteYou can also add anti-aliasing via the Setup file. In the Setup file, find the Graphics Module in the Explorer panel (added via Graphics Module OSG in the Toolbox), and in the resulting Properties panel, choose an anti-aliasing method.

• Enabling screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO). You can also enable SSAO within the Setup file, by adding Screen Space Ambient Occlusion from the Effect section of the Toolbox.

• Specifying whether or not to use the default light when adding new lights. You can also adjust the ambient light intensity, as well as choose to have the default light cast shadows.

• Highlight: When you select the Highlight objects when hovering the mouse box, moused-over objects are highlighted in the 3D View with colors specified in the Highlight Contour Color and Highlight Object Color fields. Click the colored rectangle for each field to bring up a dialog box to select the required color and its transparency. Alternatively, the Setup Editor's Graphics Module can also set the color (RGB) and transparency for the Highlight Contour Color and Highlight Object Color parameters.

• Overlaying a Grid. Select this box to show a grid overlay in the active viewport. From the Grid Display Mode drop-down, select:

  • Default: The grid will display in mechanisms, assemblies, and parts.

  • All On: The grid will always display in all file types.

  • All Off: The grid will not display in all file types.

Setup

This tab offers specialized options for:

• Swapping a custom materials table for the default provided by Vortex Studio (this should only be used by the most advanced users).

• Specifying an Application Setup file to load.

• Log File: Click Open... to view the application log file.

• Plugin Paths: Click Add Path to specify the location of a plugin you want to include in the simulation.

Simulation

• Restore values after simulation: Allows you to choose whether all values altered during a simulation revert back to their original values once the simulation ends, or only kinematics and outputs.

• Toggling the visibility of accessories during simulation

Plugins

This tab displays the list of plugins installed in the Editor. You can load plugins from disk, see brief or detailed information about them, and enable or disable them.

Plugins are used to extend and customize the features and functionality of the Vortex Studio application. The list of plugins is grouped by category. For example, the Utility category includes these plugins among others:

• VxSimPython

• VxSimRecorder

You can toggle the list under each category between appearing expanded or collapsed by clicking the arrow to the left of the category name.