1. Drop down list of Galaxies3D datafiles. To switch to a new scene (a new datafile), select it from the drop down list. Then press the Render button immediately below it to display it.
2. Zoom. Dragging the track bar marker right and left zooms in and zooms out the base grid and the scene anchored to it.
3. Raise/Lower grid along z-axis. Dragging the track bar marker right and left lowers and raises the base grid and the scene anchored to it.
4. Y Animation Panel. Clicking "Start Y Animation" starts an animation in which the grid and the objects anchored to it rotate before us. Click "Pause Y Animation" to pause the animation, "End Y Animation" to end it.
5. X Animation Panel. Clicking "Start X Animation" starts an animation in which the grid and the objects anchored to it "rock" between a partially edge-on view to an overhead view. Click "Pause X Animation" to pause the animation, "End X Animation" to end it.
Notes on Animations:
- X and Y animations cannot run simultaneously. X Animation buttons are disabled while a Y Animation is running, and visa versa.
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- Imagine as you look at the computer screen in front of you an XY plane parallel to and just behind your computer screen, the X-axis going from left to right, the Y-axis going from bottom to top. A Y-animation is a rotation of the scene around the XY plane's Y-axis. An X-animation is a rotation of a scene around the XY plane's X axis. You can also imagine a Z-axis going in and out of the screen, along the direction of your line of sight. There is no "Z-animation", but you can manually rotate the scene around the Z-axis if desired (see immediately below).
6. Manual Rotations. You can manually change the perspective and view angles of a scene by dragging the markers along the:
- Rotate about X trackbar,
- Rotate about Y trackbar,
- Rotate about Z trackbar,
manually rotating the scene along the X, Y, and Z axes just described above. Note however that after manually changing a scene:
- the automated X and Y animations will likely no longer work as expected.
- If a new dataset is loaded, its initial position will also be altered by the manual changes and label positions may be skewed
Close and restart the programs if these are problems.
7. ON-OFF Increase-Decrease Buttons:
- Labels ON-OFF Increase-Decrease. Clicking these buttons will toggle labels on-off, and increase, or decrease label size.
- Lines ON-OFF Increase-Decrease. Clicking these buttons will toggle lines (the lines anchoring each sphere to the base grid) on-off, and increase, or decrease line size.
- Sphere Increase-Decrease. Clicking these buttons will increase, or decrease the sphere size.
- Legend ON-OFF. Clicking this button will toggle the Legend on-off.
- z=0 Grid ON-OFF. Clicking this button will toggle the z=0 Grid on-off. (The z=0 grid is a grid placed at position z=0 — at the actual position of the equatorial, or galactic, or supergalactic plane, depending on the coordinate system of the scene.)
- Bitmap ON-OFF. Clicking this button will toggle any bitmap painted on the base gride on-off.
8. About button. Toggles a form with program name and the link to the website.
