Copy/Paste

There is a copy/paste function linked to objects in the scene that allows us to integrate a large number of the same elements without having to take them out of the asset pack each time, preserving the editing values of the copied object. Obviously, the preservation of edits involves an overlap of the pasted object with its original, but it will be in an unconfirmed state, i.e. with an active tool that can then allow any rotation, movement or scaling according to our needs.

A typical example is that of an audience of chairs facing a stage, i.e. a positioning with possible rotation repeated n times in different points of the space, usually spaced with some regularity.

This tool has no counterpart on the HUD, only keyboard shortcuts, and since we are dealing with copy/paste there, the shortcuts are, as usual, ctrl+C and ctrl+V (cmd+C/cmd+V on Mac systems). All you have to do is select the object you want, copy it, paste it and position it where you want.

Copy/Paste commands are contextual. This means they must be performed in the correct location according to the reference. To copy an object, you must select it and not move the mouse focus elsewhere, such as to a different tab or application, where a "paste" command might produce different results. In fact, if the mouse were somewhere else in the browser and the URL bar were selected, the "paste" command would give no result or might paste additional text strings previously entered into memory.

To give a demonstration of the copy/paste tool, we will use a variation of the playground by eliminating some of the objects in the environment, leaving only the yellow cube as a spatial reference in the center of the scene. We select them one by one and delete them with the Erase button .

Instead of the removed cubes, the result we want to achieve is in the following example: we will place a single red cube and assign a rotation to it. We will then distribute the others by copying the first one.

Select a red cube from the asset pack and place it in the desired location.

Keeping the selection active on the cube, we adjust the position if necessary, then select the rotate tool and set it to 45° on the y axis. This is the result:

It is not really necessary to confirm the object once it is correctly positioned: if we are sure of the settings, it will be enough to copy it (ctrl+C/cmd+C) when it is selected, taking care to keep the mouse selection in the workspace and not on the outer parts of the HUD (asset pack or any customization panels).

Pasting the newly copied object (Ctrl+V/cmd+V) will place it in perfect overlap.

We can see that not only the selected object itself is clearly preserved, but also its position, rotation and the last selected tool. So we move the object to the desired coordinates. We can do this by acting on the axes or by direct input.

Before confirming, we can now consider two options:

• repeat the copy/paste operation again, replicating the new object in the active selection

• repeat only the paste operation, which will then refer to the previously copied object.

In this case, we will proceed with the first hypothesis, keeping the active selection on the new object, and repeat the command pair.

The object of the active selection is then copied and pasted to itself.

We then move it to the desired position and confirm the operation.

Of the previous hypotheses, we now take advantage of the second one: one object is already in the copy buffer, the middle one, so without selecting anything, we simply replicate the paste command.

The new cube will, as expected, take the same position as the previously copied object and we will move it to the desired position.

This solution, especially when we are dealing with a progression in a series of objects (such as a row of chairs), may not be the ideal choice, since it would force us to make sequential movements that are from time to time greater than the initial position.

On the other hand, it comes in handy when we want to paste and move elements around a starting one, since having a definite central reference also facilitates the calculation of shiftings and the amount of motion we have to apply.