Preferences

Hexagon contains a preference system, that is a set of parameters that can be customized mainly concerning the display and communication with external applications.

The preference editor can be accessed from the Edit / Preference menu. This is a dialog box with tabs. Each tab containing a category of preferences:

• Interface
• 3D display
• Imports / Exports

The preferences window.

Allows you to set:

• The language of the interface,
• The full screen or window mode
• The 3D workspace background color

Allows you to set the parameters of the workspace grid and rulers:

• Anti-aliasing of grid images (slower but nicer)
• Grids size
• Number of columns of the grids
• Number of rows of the grids
• Grids color
• Grid main axis color

Allows you to set:

• Display the 3D rulers on the full space or only on the quarter where the cursor is located.
• Display gradations on the entire rulers or only on the current quarter.
• Displays or not the numerical values on the 3D rulers.
• Displays the value of the current tool parameters in the 3D workspace near the cursor (allows you to control precisely a value without looking at the property palette).
• Origin of the world coordinates

Allows you to set:

• Enable or disable the display of a dialog during import and export showing the parameters available for the selected format.
• Enable or disable the tool tips display.
• Maximum number of undo actions memorized. Setting a high value may require a huge amount of memory.
• Display the rendering speed as the number of frames displayed per second (fps) in the 3D workspace near the document name. This can be useful to evaluate the performances of a computer.
• Display the current document name in the 3D workspace
• Activation of the DAZ news service (a dialog launched when the application starts showing the news about DAZ and Hexagon – tutorials, updates, etc.)
• Don't show the same news twice.
• Display a flying palette showing the icon and name of each command executed (useful for recording training videos).
• Camera rotation speed when navigating using the keyboard arrow keys
• Camera translation speed when navigating using the keyboard arrow keys
• Invert camera rotation: allows to invert the rotation path of the camera. By default, when moving the mouse to the left, the camera turns to the right. Some users may find more natural to the contrary.
• Universal manipulator size in pixels.
• Space Mouse activation.
• Moving the camera around the selection instead of around the center of the scene (Alt+Ctrl/Command+Left Click shortcut).
• Overriding the default settings of the tablet.

Allows you to set:

• Create colored objects: each created object as a different color taken from a set of predefined colors.
• Color used when creating objects (if the previous option is turned off)
• Color used for displaying the edges on surfaces
• Color used for displaying the points on objects
• Size of points
• Line width.

Allows you to set:

• The selection color when the previous option is set.
• Display a bounding box around the selected objects.
• Display the geometric center of the selected object.
• Display edges on the selected object.
• Edge width of the selected edges.
• Control shape color for dynamic geometry.
• Color of selected edges, points and facets.
• Toggles the highlighting of selection items when the cursor hovers selectable entities.
• Highlight color.
• Dynamic geometry highlight color.
• Highlight color for selected entities.
• Color of the bounding box.
• Opacity factor for objects being selected or when editing dynamic geometry.

These parameters are related to the OpenGL 3D display. They may be changed for performance reasons or graphic board features:

• Fast transparency: for legacy graphic boards not supporting alpha blending transparency.
• Two sided lighting: enabled by default. When disabled, the back faces of objects will not be lit. Some graphic boards do not support this mode resulting in very slow rendering.
  • Refresh method when in multi-view:
  • Refresh all views
• Refresh only the current active view.
• Using OpenGL display lists and VBOs: activating these two modes can improve display performances. The VBO Display mode is more powerful, but is not compatible with all systems, and does not work on MacOS.
• Partial Redraw: activated by default, this option enables to calculate the display only around the screen cursor.
• Anti-aliasing of lines: this option improves the display of lines but can slow down the rendering on some graphic boards.
• Clipping planes and buffers: these preferences let experienced users to do precise settings for optimal display performances.

Allows you to set:

• Global light colors
• Fog activation and level: the fog allows you to make the objects far from the viewpoint fade out and become invisible allowing then to evaluate more accurately the position of objects in the 3D space

They allow to control several parameters for each format:

• Additional extensions: allows you to add more file extensions to the default ones. For instance: .dxf, .dxf2D for Autocad files.
• Export scale factor: works for import and export. For instance, setting this value to 100 for the 3DS format means that the size of models created in Hexagon will be multiplied by 100 and the size of models imported from 3DS into Hexagon will be divided by 100.
• Unit of the file to import or export.
• Coordinate system mapping: Each 3D file format and each 3D software application may have a different orientation of the coordinate system. In Hexagon, the X axis is the width, Y is the height and Z is the depth. Depending on the orientation required, set the axis accordingly and Hexagon will apply the corresponding transformation during import or export.
• Export Uvs: some file formats supports exporting UVS coordinates for texture mapping. This option allows you to choose to export them or not.
• Export Normals: some file formats supports exporting vertex normals. This option allows you to choose to export them or not.
• For the Hexagon native file format, it is possible to define if the textures created within Hexagon will be embedded in the data file, or saved as external files (by default).