Mesh Properties

A list of the common mesh properties all mesh types have, and how to edit them for one or many meshes.

Editing properties

Change one mesh.

If you select one mesh, the properties pane shows many of the properties below. Any edits you make are applied to that single mesh.

Change many meshes at once.

If you select more than one mesh, the properties pane will only display the properties that can be changed across all your selections. For example, select one mesh: you can change the position and the visibility. But add a second mesh to the selection, and the position property disappears. But you can still change the visibility of both meshes at once.

Property	Options
Name	Your name of the mesh. Try to keep the name unique. While the same name can be shared across multiple meshes, doing so makes run-time manipulations with Snap more difficult.
Visible	Set this to false to hide the mesh, or true to show it. You can also click the visibility icon next to the object in the explorer. It is a shortcut to this property.
Position X,Y,Z	To change the location for the entire object, enter the desired coordinates for the object origin. To change the location for only a portion of the object, leaving the rest of the object in place, use a Move Vertices feature instead. To quickly move a mesh to the origin, right-click the mesh’s entry in the explorer, and select “Center geometry to origin”. This is a fast way to find and fix imported geometry which can sometimes be located at a strange, distant location.
Rotation Mode Rotation Axis X,Y,Z Rotation Angle	Set the mode and parameters to rotate the object. See the Scene Technique note on Rotation Modes for more information.
Scale	To change the size of the entire mesh, enter a multiplier here to make the mesh larger or smaller. A scale of 1 means 100% (no change). Enter a scale of 0.2 to make the mesh 5 times smaller (20% of its original size). To change the size of specific dimensions of the mesh (say, to make it taller on the Y axis, or thicker on the X axis), use the Transform Geometry feature. To change the size of specific dimensions of the mesh, while keeping portions of the mesh unchanged (say, to make a picture frame wider while keeping the frame thickness), use the Move Vertices feature.
Pivot	The pivot is the point in space around which this mesh is rotated. By default, a mesh’s pivot is in the same location as the mesh’s origin: at the mathematical center of the mesh. This location is expressed by the vector [0,0,0]. If you want to rotate your object around some point other than the origin of the object, you can change the [x,y,z] location of this pivot. For example, a planet with a pivot of [0,0,0] will rotate around its origin (spin in place on its axis). Move the pivot to some location outside the planet, like the location of the sun, and the planet will then rotate around that point (orbit the sun). Viewing the pivot location If the pivot of an object is not at the object’s origin, you’ll see it in the 3D viewer when the object is selected as a small dot the same color as the selected object. Changing the pivot location logically by typing relative [x,y,z] distances from the origin, or visually by clicking move pivot to show the pivot move gizmo. The pivot itself appears as a bright red dot at the center of the gizmo. Drag the gizmo to move the the pivot.
	The following properties can be found on visible meshes. Invisible meshes, such as groups, do not have them.
Bake Transform	If you want to permanently re-orient the mesh’s settings (position, rotation, and scale) to the world coordinate system, click this button. This will apply your transformation to the mesh, “baking” it into the mesh, then reset the position, rotation, and scale to their defaults of [0,0,0], [0,0,0], and 1. For example, you rotated a mesh 12.746º so it appears correctly in the scene. You may want to call this the new 0º for that mesh. To do so, you could adjust every bit of rotation code you’ve made so far, subtracting or adding those 12.746º to account for your scene adjustments, and remember to do the same for any code you write in the future. or simply bake your transform and call it done. Note that baking a transformation is different from collapsing a stack of features.
Material Source / Material	Select a material to apply to the faces of this mesh. If no material is applied, the mesh appears with a flat gray color.
Flip Surface Orientation	The faces of a mesh have two sides or “surfaces”, like a sheet of paper. For faster rendering, materials are usually applied only to one surface, usually the “outside” surface. The opposite surface has no material applied, and therefore appears transparent. Click this box to apply the material to the opposite face of the surfaces. This can be useful when you want to see the inside of an object without losing the overall structure of the object. To make a mesh two-sided instead of one-sided, apply a double-sided material.
Cast Shadows / Receive Shadows	For faster rendering, meshes do not cast or receive shadows by default. To give your scene a more realistic appearance, turn on “cast shadows” for the few objects that should cast a shadow, and “receive shadows” for those objects where you want shadows to appear on their surfaces. Learn more about shadows.
Is Pickable	If the user tries to select this mesh (by clicking it with a mouse, or tapping on it using a mobile device), should the mesh accept the selection, or pass the selection through to other objects behind it? By default, this is true for meshes, and the mesh will accept the selection. For larger overlay objects that may be blocking interactivity to other objects behind them, turn this off.
Opacity	Specify how opaque the mesh renders when viewed. By default, the opacity is 1 (100% opaque). Values can range from 0 to 1.
Metadata	Optional tags you apply at design-time to help you select or manipulate specific meshes during run time.
Shape Properties
	This section appears only for primitive meshes. Primitive meshes have shape properties to help you easily adjust them, such as Radius for meshes with a curved profile, to adjust the size of the curve. Height for meshes with a square profile, to adjust that dimension. Tessellation or Segmentation property, to adjust the number of straight-edged polygons created to build a surface. The higher the value, the more polygons, and the smoother the resulting curve. Too many polygons can slow the scene.
Text Properties
	This section appears only for text meshes. Text meshes convert the characters you specify into separate meshes in 3D space. This is one of multiple techniques available to render text on or over a scene. See also material layers and hotspots.
Text	The characters you want to appear.
Curve Radius	Set to positive values to curve the baseline of the text downwards, or negative values to curve upwards. Default 0.
Font Size	Adjust the size of all characters. Default 1.
Font File	Browse to a .ttf font file stored in the media folder, or one of it's subfolders.
Character Spacing	Adjust the spacing between all characters by specifying values. Default 1 (100%).
Sketch Paths
	This section appears only for sketch meshes. Sketches consist of a series of paths, which are listed here. Learn more about sketches and paths.
Material
	Select the material you would like to “paint” onto allthe faces of the mesh. to apply a material to only some faces of the mesh, use the Submesh feature.
Connectors
	Mesh connectors define a point in space within a mesh, and are the foundation for building a mate, annotation, or dimension. Read more about mesh connectors.
Features
	Mesh features are stackable, repeatable transformations applied to a mesh both at design time and run-time. Read more about mesh features.