3.6 The object tree

Objects can be parented to each other. A child’s transform is stored relative to its parent, so moving a parent carries everything under it, keeping every offset and aim.

Rearranging

Drag a row and it tells you what will happen before you let go. The row is read in vertical thirds:

Table 3.3 What a drag will do.

Pointer	Marker	Result
Middle of a row	The row lights up	The objects become its children
Top or bottom quarter	A line at that edge, indented to the level it lands at	They become siblings, exactly there
A refused destination	The same marker in red, with a reason in the status bar	Nothing — and you knew before releasing
Empty space below the tree	A line under the last row	Out to the root, at the end

• A line under the last child of a group is ambiguous — stay in, or come out? Drag left to step out a level, right to stay in. The line’s own indentation shows which you are getting.
• Drags carry the selection. Start on a selected row and the whole selection moves, as one undo entry.
• Rest on a folded group for a moment and it opens, so a deep drop does not need you to let go first.
• Racks and shelves take no line. Their children are ordered by slot, so a drop inside one becomes a drop onto the rack — which mounts the device.
• A folded branch stays folded — in the project, not just for the session (§2.3).

Naming

The first one of a kind takes the bare name and the second one is numbered: Cutter, then Cutter (2). An index on the only one of a kind is noise, and it promises a (2) that may never exist. Duplicating counts on rather than growing a tail — Custom Projector → (2) → (3) — and only a parenthesised bare number reads as an index, so a machine you called Mark II (Rev 2) keeps its name. The array tools are deliberately left alone: Wall 2, Wall 3 is what those units are called on site.