Transform and snapping
Transform and snapping
Dragging by hand gets a prop roughly where you want it. The snapping keys get it exactly there.
Every key here does one thing while editing. That is deliberate: earlier layouts had surface align on Left Alt (which is also the cursor toggle) and vertex snap on Ctrl+Z (which is also undo), and both misfired constantly.
Modes
| Key | Mode |
|---|---|
| W | Move |
| R | Rotate |
| S | Scale |
| Q | Toggle world / local axes |
World axes are aligned to the map. Local axes are aligned to the prop itself — the one you want when moving a prop that is already rotated 30°.
Snapping
| Key | Hold or press | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Left Ctrl | hold | Grid snap on position, angle snap on rotation |
| V | hold | Vertex snap — the prop's corner jumps to the nearest corner of another prop |
| X | hold | Surface align — the prop lies flat against whatever surface you point at, matching its angle |
| Space | press | Drop onto the ground directly below |
| G | press | Reset rotation to zero |
The HUD shows which snap is active while you hold it, so you always know what the next drag will do.
Which one to use
Grid snap for anything that should line up: walls, fences, floor tiles, road furniture.
Vertex snap for anything that should touch: modular building pieces, connected fence runs, stacked crates. This is what makes a wall of separate panels read as one wall.
Surface align for anything that should follow a slope or a wall: signs, pipes, debris on a hillside, a ladder against a building. Without it you are eyeballing two rotation axes at once.
Space for the common case of "this is floating one metre up".
Scale
Scale is per-axis. In the properties panel you can type exact values; with the gizmo you drag. Scale is stored with the prop and carried through every export format that can express it.
Exact numbers
Open M → Transform for numeric position and rotation fields. Type values, or copy the ones the editor shows into a script. Reset returns the prop to zero rotation and default scale.
Attaching
Hold Shift while editing to attach the prop to the one you point at, so moving the parent moves both. Useful for building a composite object out of several models — a sign on a pole, a light on a bracket — before positioning it as a unit.