SMUSTARD

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Getting Started

What Is Smustard

Smustard draws in 3D with lines and faces that you push to make volumes. Everything is measured in meters. It's free, from TECOMA LABS.

The Screen

  • At the top, the menus: File (New, Open…, Download Project, Save As .skp…, Save as Template…, Import…, Export to glTF, OBJ, STL, USDZ, DXF, DWG, COLLADA, Google Earth, 3DS, VRML or FBX, Export Image…, Export 2D Drawing…, Export 2D Section…, Export Animation…, Export 360° Panorama… and Print…), Edit, View (Toolbars…, which turns each toolbar on and off, and the large tool set to the left of the view; Live Dimensions, Tray), Camera (Previous and Next, the standard views, the projections, Orbit, Pan, Zoom, Zoom Window, Zoom Extents and Zoom Selection), Draw, Tools, Window (with Trays…, to make your own trays with the panels you want and switch between them with their tabs) and Help (Manual, Search for an Action, Welcome to Smustard, About Smustard).
  • Below, the toolbar: click an icon to choose the tool; hover over it to see its name and its key.
  • On the right, the tray with two panels that fold with a click on their title: Entity Info (the selection and its measurements) and Instructor (how to use the active tool). Window › shows or hides them; View › Tray hides the whole tray.
  • At the bottom, the status bar: on the left, what to do now; on the right, the Measurements box.
  • Window › Model Info: the model's Units and Statistics.

This Manual

Open it with Help › Manual, with “Open the Manual” in the Instructor or with ⌘K › Manual. Esc closes it. The examples at the end can be followed step by step.

The View

  • Trackpad: two fingers orbit, Shift + two fingers pan, pinch zooms.
  • Mouse: middle button orbits (with ⌘ or ⌥, without gravity); Shift + middle button or right button pans; wheel zooms; double middle-click centers what is underneath.
  • Space + drag pans. Everything orbits around what is under the cursor.
  • Camera › Previous and Next go back to earlier views. The standard views (top, front…, isometric) keep the projection: Parallel Projection, Perspective or Two-Point Perspective.
  • Zoom Selection and, right-clicking a face, Align View, which turns it to face you.
  • “Dimensions” turns the live measurements on or off.
  • File › Add Location… (or the pin in the status bar, at the bottom left) opens an OpenStreetMap map: search for an address, a postal code or a place and press Enter, or type its coordinates (latitude; longitude). Drag the map and zoom with the wheel or with + and −: the pin in the center is where the model origin goes. “My Location” asks the browser for yours.
  • Set Location saves the place, the latitude, the longitude and the north angle (those in Model Info › Location), and the sun is worked out from there. The pin in the status bar shows in color when the model is geo-located; hover over it to see where.
  • View › Location Pin shows or hides the pin at the origin of the geo-located model.
  • Continue (instead of Set Location) moves on to adding the surroundings: move the blue frame inside the map and enlarge it by its corners, choose the map (the OpenStreetMap street map; the PNOA orthophoto from IGN, in Spain; or the USGS one, in the 48 contiguous US states) and the resolution, and press Add Map. It goes under the model, in a locked group with the Geo-location tag and its attribution drawn on it; with the street map, you get what you see on the map. Clear Location also removes the maps.
  • Relief (Low, Medium or High, instead of Flat) lays the map over the site’s terrain, from Terrain Tiles (AWS Open Data), with more or fewer points: a Site Relief group, with height 0 at the model origin. The status bar shows its heights above sea level.
  • Buildings also adds the buildings inside the frame, from OpenStreetMap (via OpenFreeMap), each one its outline raised to its height, in a Surrounding Buildings group that does cast shadows; with relief, on the terrain. At most 2000.
  • The map and search come from the OpenStreetMap Foundation (© OpenStreetMap contributors; search by Nominatim): they are only requested when you open the dialog and search, at most one search per second.

In the Camera menu and on the toolbar: Orbit (O), Pan (H), Zoom (Z), Zoom Window, Zoom Extents (⇧Z) and the standard views (isometric, top, front, right, back, left; bottom is in the menu). Views keep the projection: for a plan to scale, Top View and Parallel Projection. Tools › Section Plane cuts the model so you can see inside; View › Section Planes and View › Section Cuts show or hide them, and View › Section Fill fills what is cut. View › Shadows turns on sun shadows (Window › Shadows: date, time, light and dark; Model Info › Location: where the model is and its north) and View › North draws the north arrow. View › Fog fades what is far away (Window › Fog: start, end and color). Camera › Match New Photo… fits the camera to a photo (red and green vanishing bars, and the origin) so you can model on top of it. View › Add Scene saves the view; its tabs go back to it (Page Up and Page Down move from one to the next) and Window › Scenes manages them. Going to a scene moves the camera gradually (Model Info › Animation: the transition time and the delay at each scene); View › Play Animation runs through the scenes included in the animation, over and over, and Pause, Stop, Esc or a click in the view stops it. To walk through the model like a person: Position Camera (the eye 1.676 m above a point), Look Around and Walk (with stairs and walls). The Camera menu also has Previous and Next (the earlier views), Isometric, Perspective, Two-Point Perspective (verticals stay straight), Field of View… (or choose Zoom and type 45 or 35mm) and Zoom Selection. Right-click a face and Align View turns it to face you. View › Live Dimensions turns the measurements next to what you draw on or off. View › X-ray, Wireframe, Hidden Line, Shaded, Shaded With Textures, Monochrome, Realistic (physical materials with reflections: each material's Metal and Roughness, in Window › Materials), Edges and Back Edges (K) change the style; Window › Styles edits it, with its collection (Default, Flat, Sky and Ground…), and Create Style, Update, Delete and Mix.

Select

  • Space activates Select. One click selects one thing: a face (or its surface), an edge (or its whole curve) or an object.
  • Double-click: the face with its edges, or the edge with its faces; on a group, opens it for editing. Triple-click: everything connected.
  • Drag from left to right to select what is fully inside; from right to left, what it touches.
  • ⌥ adds, ⇧ toggles, ⇧⌥ removes. Esc clears the selection. Delete erases the selection. Right-click › Select: bounding edges, connected faces, all connected, all instances, connected by snaps, deselect edges or faces.

Measurements and Units

  • While a tool measures, the box at the bottom right shows what it measures: type another value and press Enter.
  • Without a unit it uses the model's unit; with a unit: 350mm, 35cm, 3.5m, 6", 10', 1'6", 6 1/2". Two values, separated by a comma: 4,3.
  • A negative value reverses the mouse direction. [x,y,z] is an exact point and <x,y,z> a relative offset (Line and Move).
  • Window › Model Info › Units: format, unit, precision and settings; in Decimal, also the area and volume unit and precision (with liters and US gallons).

The model's units are changed in Window › Model Info › Units. In Decimal, area and volume can have their own unit and precision (for example, length in cm, area in m² and volume in liters or US gallons). Format: Decimal (mm, cm, m, inches, feet or yards), Architectural (feet and inches: 3' 6 1/2"), Fractional (inches: 42 1/2") or Engineering (feet with decimals: 3.54'). Precision sets how many decimals or what fraction is shown; if a value is rounded, it has ~ in front.

  • You don't need to click the box: start typing with a digit, a sign or a bracket, and while there is text all keys go to it. Backspace deletes, Esc clears it, Enter applies it.
  • In Rectangle, 4; changes only the width and ;3 only the depth. Right after an operation, typing another measurement corrects it.
  • Coordinates: [x;y;z] goes to that point (in the model, or in the group you are editing) and <x;y;z> moves from the starting point.
  • Length Snapping: if you give it a step, for example 5cm, what you measure with the mouse is rounded to multiples of it, except when the cursor snaps to a point. Angle Snapping: Rotate snaps to multiples of the step (15° by default).

Snapping

The cursor snaps to endpoints, midpoints, edges, faces and the red, green and blue axes; the label next to the cursor says what to. Hover over a point for a moment and move away: guides come out of it, and where two guides cross it snaps too. Shift locks the direction; → ← ↑ lock an axis and ↓ the parallel or perpendicular shown (in Circle, Arcs, Rectangle… it locks the plane of the last face you hovered over). After hovering over an edge, its extension snaps (“Edge Extension”); after hovering over a face, a line snaps to its normal (“Perpendicular to Face”). It also snaps to the middle of a whole arc (“Arc Midpoint”), to the line where a section plane cuts the faces (“On Section”, with View › Section Cuts) and to the origin of a closed group or component, which takes priority. Whatever belongs to a closed group or component says so (“Endpoint in Group”, “On Edge in Component”) and its marker shows in magenta.