Menus and palette commands

Orbit's commands sit in the menu bar, in the menus of the toolbar, in the menus that open with a right-click and in the command palette, which opens with ⌘K. Keys with no menu item are in Keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures. For where each menu sits, see The window.

#Menu bar

Menu shortcuts work even while the cursor is in a text field. Orbit adds nothing to the Edit, Window and Help menus, which hold the standard macOS items.

#Orbit

The rest of the Orbit menu holds the standard macOS items.

#File

The procedures that use these items are in Save, open and recover scenes and Import and export objects.

#View

Everything else in the View menu is standard in macOS.

#Toolbar menus

A toolbar menu opens below its button, or above it when there is more room there, and scrolls when it is taller than the window. It closes when you choose an item or click outside it. The arrow keys do not move through these menus.

#NEW

#IMPORT

#EXPORT

The EXPORT button is dimmed in the free version, and whenever no object or group is selected. Its tooltip says which.

#ADD OBJECT

SPHERE, TORUS, BOX, CYLINDER, CONE, PLATONIC, SPLINE TUBE, EXTRUDE, LATHE, HELIX, MÖBIUS, TORUS KNOT, METABALLS, TERRAIN, WATER, TEXT, SADDLE, HYPERBOLOID, PARABOLOID, GROWTH and EMITTER come first, in that order. Each adds that object at the center of the scene, resting on the ground and selected. The new object is named after its kind with a number, such as Torus 2. Object types describes each kind.

#LIGHTING

The menu holds THREE-POINT, DRAMATIC, STUDIO, NEON, BACKLIT and VOID. Choosing one replaces every light in the scene with that setup and clears the selection, in one undo step. See Light a scene.

#TRANSFORM

The TRANSFORM button opens a panel headed with the number of objects it acts on, such as 1 OBJ. It is dimmed unless every selected item is an object. Each click acts on every selected object separately and records one undo step. The panel stays open until you click outside it.

See Move, rotate and scale objects.

#BOOLEAN

The BOOLEAN button is dimmed until the selected objects are closed solids that touch. Its tooltip gives the reason when it is dimmed.

See Combine and cut objects with booleans.

#Right-click menus

In the viewport, right-clicking an object that is not selected selects it alone before the menu opens. Right-clicking one of several selected items keeps the selection, and a header such as 3 OBJECTS SELECTED tops the menu. These menus close the same way as the toolbar menus.

#An object in the viewport

The items appear in this order, divided into groups by lines.

#Empty space in the viewport

Right-clicking water opens this menu too, since water counts as empty space here. The menu of a water object opens from its row in OBJECTS.

#A row in OBJECTS

The group items are NEW GROUP and ADD TO a group for a row outside any group, and REMOVE FROM GROUP and MOVE TO another group for a row inside one. On an object or light row, each item acts on the whole selection when the row is part of it, and on the row alone otherwise. DISSOLVE removes the group and keeps its members. The OBJECTS menus have no item for renaming; the name field at the top of the INSPECTOR renames. See Organize a scene.

#ORBIT in the controls panel

Right-clicking ORBIT, or clicking the arrow beside it, opens 3 SECONDS / ROTATION, 6 SECONDS / ROTATION, 10 SECONDS / ROTATION, 15 SECONDS / ROTATION and 30 SECONDS / ROTATION, each of which sets the speed and starts the camera circling, then EXPORT TURNTABLE….

#A snapshot in the dock

See Save camera angles.

#Command palette

⌘K opens the palette over the window. Type part of a command's name to narrow the list, then press Return or click a command to run it; Run any command by name shows how. The palette shows no group names, and its list holds at most nine commands. With the field empty, the list starts with the last eight commands run since Orbit started, then continues in the order of the groups below. Where a command has a shortcut, the palette shows it at the right of the line, written as in the Hint column. A few hints list the modifier keys in a different order from the menus, such as ⌘⇧E for ⇧⌘E, but the keys are the same.

#Adding, hiding and isolating

Always listed.

#Views

Always listed.

#Render looks and lighting

Always listed.

#Selection

#Materials and skies

#Poly edit

Listed only in poly edit. Most of these act on the selected points, edges or faces of the current mode, as the matching buttons in the INSPECTOR do. Where the button takes its amount from a slider, the palette uses a fixed amount, given in the table; the sliders are described in Mesh editing tools.

See Edit a mesh point by point.

#View modes and switches

Always listed.

#Sheets and panels

Always listed.

#Files

Always listed.

Related: Run any command by name, The window, Keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures and What undo covers.