TrenchBroom Help - Editing Objects

## Editing Objects

TrenchBroom allows you to move, rotate and flip objects. All properties of faces and entities can be changed using the inspector. Of course, you can also delete objects.

### Moving Objects

You can either move objects using the cursor keys or the mouse. The
and
cursor keys move the selected objects left or right on the XY plane whereas the
and
keys move them towards or away from the camera. To move objects vertically, use the
or
key.

Moving objects with the mouse.

To move the selected objects horizontally using the mouse, click and drag the objects with the left mouse button. To move them vertically, hold the
while dragging. Note that while holding the
key, the axis gizmo in the bottom left of the 3D view highlights the blue Z arrow to indicate movement is locked to that axis.

You can also toggle between horizontal direction locking with the
key. The red and green axis arrows in the gizmo will become highlighted to indicate which direction movement is currently restricted to. Continue to cycle through the options with
to unrestrict directional movement.

By default, Grid Snapping is on, and will restrict object movement to the grid size. If for some purpose you wish to turn this behavior off, choose
. Please note that the author of this document highly recommends against doing this for general editing, as it can only lead to trouble attempting to align brush faces and edges precisely.

### Rotating Objects

There are two options for rotating objects. The first is to rotate the selected brushes by 90° about the one of the axes of the coordinate system. The second is to rotate the selected objects freely using the mouse. In both cases, the center of the rotation is the center of the selected objects' bounding box. If grid snapping is enabled, the rotation center is snapped to the grid.

To rotate the selected objects by 90° clockwise about one of the axes of the coordinate system, choose one of the rotation commands from the Edit » Actions menu or hit the appropriate keyboard shortcut. The following rotation commands are available:

- Rotate 90° CW (
  ) - roll the selected objects clockwise about the closest axis of the camera direction by 90°.
- Rotate 90° CCW (
  ) - roll the selected objects counter-clockwise about the closest axis of the camera direction by 90°.
- Rotate 90° Left (
  ) - rotate the selected objects counter-clockwise about the Z axis by 90°.
- Rotate 90° Right (
  ) - rotate the selected objects clockwise about the Z axis by 90°.
- Rotate 90° Up (
  ) - rotate the selected objects clockwise about the closest axis of the camera right axis by 90°.
- Rotate 90° Down (
  ) - rotate the selected objects counter-clockwise about the closest axis of the camera right axis by 90°.

Objects can also be rotated freely without any restriction as to the angle or axis of the rotation. To rotate the selected objects, activate the rotate tool by choosing
. You will see a rotate handle displayed approximately at the center of the bounding box of the selected objects.

Rotating objects with the mouse.

The rotate handle consists of three quarter rings, each of which lets you rotate the selected objects about either the X,Y or Z axis. To start the rotation, click and drag the left mouse button on of the rings. Note that the rotation angle is constrained to 15° increments if grid snap is enabled. Disable grid snap to rotate the selected objects without any constraints.

### Flipping Objects

Flipping objects horizontally.

The selected objects can be flipped (or mirrored) horizontally by choosing
from the menu. To flip the selected objects vertically, choose
from the menu.

### Deleting Objects

To delete brushes or entities, select them in the 3D view and hit the
key.

### Using the Entity Property Editor

Each Quake entity has some properties associated with it. These properties control the appearance or the effect of an entity in the game. Each property has a key and a value. In TrenchBroom, these properties can be edited using property list in the entity inspector. The property list represents all properties of the selected entities.

The property editor.

To edit the key or the value of a property, simply select it and start typing. Hit
to commit the changes. To create a new property, click on the plus button next to the property list. To delete one or more properties, select them in the list and click on the minus button next to the property list. Note that you can also edit the properties of multiple selected entities at once.

For some entity properties, TrenchBroom has special support in the form of smart property editors. In the screenshot above, you see the smart property editor for spawnflags. It will show up below the property list whenever you select the spawnflags property key.

The color editor.

For color properties, TrenchBroom will display the smart color editor, shown in the screenshot above. You can use the sliders to adjust the RGB color values or you can click on the button below the sliders to bring up a color selection dialog. Next to the sliders, there is a list of all colors which are in use in the currently edited map. Click to select a color from the palette and to apply it to the currently selected entities.

### Trenchbroom Entity Keys

There are some entity keys that are Trenchbroom specific, these are the _def, _mod and _point_format keys and tell Trenchbroom which map specific settings to use. These keys allow the settings to persist across saves.

The _def key tells Trenchbroom which entity defition to use, the _mod key tells Trenchbroom which mod this map uses and controls things like what directories are searched for models and the _point_format key controls if Trenchbroom is using integer or float plane coordinates.

They cannot be modified by you through the smart editor interface. Instead, use the Map Properties dialog window.