Scene Editor

The Scene Editor is where you build and arrange your simulation environment. It provides a 3D viewport with Blender-style navigation, a toolbar for transforming objects, and camera controls for viewing your scene from any angle.

Viewport Navigation

Sim Assist uses Blender-style controls for navigating the 3D viewport:

On a trackpad, use two-finger drag to orbit, two-finger pinch to zoom, and hold Shift while dragging to pan.

The viewport shows a ground grid and an orientation gizmo in the top-right corner. The gizmo shows the current camera orientation and lets you click any axis to snap to that view direction.

Toolbar

The toolbar sits at the top of the viewport. Each tool has a keyboard shortcut:

Select (W)

Click to select components in the viewport. Selected components are highlighted with an outline and their properties appear in the right panel. Hold Shift to add to the selection. Click empty space to deselect.

Move (G)

Activates the translation gizmo on the selected component. Drag an axis arrow to move along one axis, or drag a plane square to move along two axes. Hold Ctrl while dragging to snap to grid increments.

Rotate (R)

Activates the rotation gizmo. Drag a colored ring to rotate around that axis. Hold Ctrl to snap to 15-degree increments. The rotation value is displayed next to the cursor during the operation.

Scale (S)

Activates the scale gizmo. Drag an axis handle to scale along one axis, or drag the center cube to scale uniformly. Hold Ctrl to snap to 0.1 increments.

Camera Presets

Use numpad keys to jump to predefined camera angles:

These presets are useful for precise alignment and checking that components are positioned correctly from multiple angles.

Gizmo and Grid

The orientation gizmo in the top-right corner of the viewport shows the current view direction with colored axes: red (X), green (Y), and blue (Z). Click any axis label to snap the view to that direction.

The ground grid provides spatial reference and snapping. You can configure grid settings in the viewport menu:

• Grid size — Distance between grid lines (default: 1 meter).
• Subdivisions — Number of subdivisions between major grid lines.
• Snap to grid — When enabled, Move, Rotate, and Scale operations snap to grid increments. Toggle with Ctrl while dragging.

Viewport Options

Access additional viewport settings from the dropdown menu in the viewport header:

• Wireframe mode — Render all objects as wireframe outlines for seeing through geometry.
• Show colliders — Visualize physics collider shapes as translucent overlays.
• Show I/O pins — Display I/O binding indicators on components that have assigned variables.
• Statistics — Show polygon count, draw calls, and frame rate in the viewport corner.