I.
II.
Handles II - Handles appear as small black squares. They show where adjustment is possible in an object's shape on the plan. The black square is actually a reversal of the colors present at the handle (black reverses to white, blue to yellow, red to cyan, etc). This can be confusing, because if a handle is doubly selected, "reversing the reverse" makes the handle disappear. Such a handle is still selected, even though it appears not to be.
III.
The Lasso - When you "lasso" any object, except for wallsets, using the pointer tool. Drag from one corner to the other, enclosing your target with the rectangle drawn. You must lasso all the corners of the object in order to select anything, and you get all the object's handles selected when you do. For walls, any corners or edges within the lasso will be individually selected.
IV.
Multiple Selections - You can "accumulate" selections by clicking while holding down the Shift key (after the first selection). This may result in doubly selecting a point, which turns off the handle appearance as described in Commandment II above, but the handle is still selected.
V.
Selecting an Object - You can make the following selections on an object:
- you can select a single handle ("corner select") by clicking on just that corner;
- you can select two adjacent handles ("edge select") by clicking on the edge between them (even if the edge is curved);
- you can select all of the handles by lassoing all of them as stated above, or by accumulating all of them as described in Commandment 3 above.
- you can select some of the handles of an object, which is all the selection cases not covered above (along with the none selected case).
Some object types can only select the whole object - these include bookroofs, 3D objects, sprinklers, CAD shapes, text, rotated text and plants.
VI.
Moving (Panning) the Object - A selection can be dragged with the mouse by making the selection and then click-dragging one of the selected edges. Only the selected corners will move, as a unit. The edges connecting selected handles with unselected handles within an object will be stretched and rotated as required. If the Snap Grid is on, the selection will come to rest so that the point selected rests exactly on a grid intersection. (The "point selected" is that handle which precedes the edge dragged with the mouse.)
VIa.
Wall Exception - Walls are an exception. If walls are selected as part of a group, dragging a wall will result in only the wall moving. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but it is certainly non-intuitive.
VII.
Nudges - Traditional draftsmen learn accuracy in all things; they do not apply pen to paper until they are perfectly sure of the accuracy of the line they are about to draw. Electronic drafting is much the same, even though it's possible to cleanly erase a line and redo it. Punch!, however, is different. In Punch! you are best advised to throw lines on the screen that approximate what you want, and then adjust them after the fact to get perfect accuracy. The main tool in this adjusting is the nudge. Nudging means moving the selection with the arrow keys rather than the mouse. The selection (including any walls) moves exactly the applicable snap grid size per arrow keystroke in the direction of the arrow. Note that this means that points are not snapped; if they were off-intersection before the nudge they will still be so afterwards. The snap grid size can be set to any amount down to the decimal equivalent of 32nds of an inch and the movement will be exact.
Using the nudge and the snap grid it is possible to bring walls into perfect alignment; so perfect that the computer cannot determine which one is really closer to a viewpoint. This can cause weird texturing problems, but which are easily recognizable for what they are.
VIII.
Rotations - Selections can be rotated as a unit around their geometric center using the rotation tool. The tool clicks at 5 degree snaps to the absolute horizontal and cannot be convinced otherwise (at least, in AS3000). To get other rotation values, use the Edit->Rotate... dialog box to enter a value rather than the tool. Rotating any selection of points less than the entire set of points in an object creates truly bizarre results, and is not recommended.
IX.
Moving a Handle - Movement of a single corner of an object with the mouse will be constrained to be along one of the extensions of the lines that originally formed the corner. This constraint may be turned off using the Shift key *after* the point is selected (using it before would signal an accumulation). This feature is very handy when working with roofs, for example, where lots of exact 90 and 45 degree angles are involved. The combination of the angular snap and the constrained movement along the line make it easy to create roof pieces that exactly match along their edges.
X.
Moving Attachments - Movement of a handle of a door or window will be constrained to lie within the wall. Points cannot be crossed over and thus reversed or flipped.
XI.
Moving an Edge - Edge selections do not work for book roofs. Dragging a corner does work, but the adjacent edges move along with the corner to maintain the rectangular shape of all book roof forms. As mentioned above, selecting any corner or edge of a book roof selects the whole object for the purposes of dragging any part except a single corner, so clicking on an edge and dragging moves the whole roof.
