Loading Multiple Products Simultaneously
Patchwork Explorer is designed to explore multiple products and multiple databases at the same time. You can either load different products in separate viewports in order to compare them or if you are using the license option "Layout," load multiple products in the same viewport to create a layout.
The products are available in the Viewport Manager as soon as a database is opened. You can also add products from other databases thanks to the multi-KDR mode.
Loading Multiple Products in Separate Viewports
Access: View Manager window > Drag and drop |
When launched, Patchwork Explorer shows a single viewport. However, up to four viewports and several viewport distributions are available. In order to load multiple products, each in its own viewport, change your viewport configuration. Refer to the chapter Viewport Configuration for more information.
Drag and drop the product that you want to load onto the desired viewport. You can also load a product in the active viewport by double-clicking.
Tip
With the "Layout" license option, if the viewport already contains a product, a drag-and-drop or a double click will replace the product currently loaded in the viewport with the product you are loading. An alert prevents you from accidentally replacing the products in a viewport if more than one product is already loaded in that viewport.
You can link viewports (see the chapter on Linking Viewports) to synchronize the manipulation of the products in the linked viewports.
Loading Multiple Products in a Single Viewport
Note
This feature requires the "Layout" license option.
Access: Viewport Manager window > Ctrl + Drag and Drop |
To load multiple products in the same viewport, begin by loading the first product normally (drag-and-drop or double click). This product will become the main product or the “master” product. The “master” product is the product with the environment attributes and post-processing that you want to apply to your scene. Regardless of the order in which you load your products, you are free to modify the “master” product at any time in the Product Manager.
Load multiple products by holding down the Ctrl key while dragging and dropping the subsequent products onto the viewport. You can load multiple instances of a single product, multiple products from a single file, or products from various databases if you have opened multiple databases.
Additional products will be placed at the point onto which they are dropped. You can place a product on the reference grid's plane, or on a surface of another product in the layout. If the cursor points to another product's surface when you drop the product you are adding, the new product will be placed on that surface. In this case, the new product's pivot will be oriented so that its Y-axis ("up") is aligned with the surface's normal. Pivot placement and orientation, as well as the recalculation of surface normals, must be set in Patchwork 3D Enterprise or Patchwork 3D Engineering prior to exporting the products.
The position and the orientation of the products in a layout can be modified once the product has been loaded. To do this, use the translation and rotation gizmos. These gizmos are available:
in the Navigation box of the Viewport Manager,
in the Viewport menu,
in the Transformation box of the Properties tab in the Product Manager.
Tip
Don't forget to save the layout of the scene that you're creating. Ctrl+S will save the layout as a .kpl file.