Editing facets by tier

The cutting instructions pane, on the left of the studio, lists every facet tier in your design in the order you'd cut it. This page covers reading that list, finding a tier's facets on the stone (and a facet's tier back in the list), and editing a tier's angle, depth and indexes in edit mode.

Reading the cutting instructions pane

The pane has two sections, Pavilion then Crown — in that order because that's the order a stone is actually cut. Click either section's header to fold or unfold it.

Each row shows:

Finding a tier on the stone, and a facet's tier

Click a tier's row and every one of its facets lights up on the stone. Click one of those facets directly on the stone and the same thing happens the other way: the facet's tier is selected, its row gets an accent border and tint, and the pane scrolls it into view if it isn't already visible. Clicking empty space, off the stone, clears the highlight.

Entering edit mode

Edit mode holds one tier at a time and lets you change its angle, its depth and its index teeth, watching the stone update as you go. There are four ways in, and all four do nothing while another tier is already being edited (their tooltips say to finish that one first):

1. Double-click a tier's row (not its notes — a click there on the selected row opens the notes editor instead).
2. Double-click one of the tier's facets on the stone.
3. Select a tier and click the toolbar's Edit button, or press Enter (see the tier toolbar below).
4. Click the toolbar's New button, which copies the selected tier and opens the copy in edit mode.

Once you're in, the top bar's mode readout, at the right, reads Editing <id> — a reminder from anywhere on the page that you're editing rather than looking at the finished design. The render settings are replaced by the edit panel, the sub bar becomes that tier's own index controls, and a cutting plane appears on the stone. The camera doesn't move.

The cutting plane

While you're editing a tier, a translucent quad is drawn through the stone in the facet's own plane — exactly where that cut lies, the width of the stone across it. It's drawn over the picture rather than being part of the render, so it costs nothing to draw and never slows the tracer down. It follows the stone as you orbit or zoom, and it stays on the facet you started editing on: changing the angle, the depth or the tier's teeth moves the plane with them, but nothing while you're in this session moves it to a different facet.

The angle and depth scales

The edit panel holds two vertical tape rulers, Angle and Depth, each a strip you can drag like a tape measure. The Angle scale runs 0° to 90°, with 0 at the top for a crown tier and at the bottom for a pavilion tier, so the number always increases the same way the cutting instructions read it. The Depth scale has no numbers at all — it's an internal unit, not one a cutter reads off directly — but it still shows ticks, and a smaller value on it cuts a deeper facet.

The index gear, while editing a tier

Whatever the sub bar describes while you're in edit mode is that tier's list of index teeth. It's the same index controls the sub bar always shows, but while a tier is open they cut that tier live instead of doing nothing.

• The gear button, at the left, reads the design's tooth count (96 by default). Click it to open the Index gear dialog: Number of teeth, a Fractional teeth checkbox (allows an index between two teeth, like 4.5), and an Arbitrary mode checkbox (see below). Enter applies, Escape or Cancel closes it without changing anything, and Apply is greyed out while the numbers entered don't make sense together.
• The tooth tape scrolls under a fixed centre mark; the tooth there is the tier's own starting index. Drag it, or scroll the wheel over it, to bring a different tooth to the centre — the facet moves round the stone as you do, live. With the tape focused, the arrow keys step one tooth, Page Up/Page Down jump a big tick, and Home goes to tooth 0. Releasing the tape (or letting the wheel settle) snaps it to the nearest tooth. A drag, a burst of scrolling, or several quick key presses all settle into one undo step, a quarter second after you stop — unlike the Angle and Depth scales' wheel and arrow keys, which each record their own step.
• Symmetry sets how many copies of the facet are cut equally spaced around the stone; it must divide evenly into the tooth count, or the field turns red and the invalid value isn't applied.
• Offset adds one more facet a fixed number of teeth after each symmetry copy; 0 means none.
• Click Symmetry or Offset to type a value directly; Enter or clicking away applies it, and leaving the field with an invalid value puts back whatever's actually in use.
• A Fine button beside the tape (and holding Shift while dragging it) works the same way as the Angle and Depth scales' own Fine buttons — each of the three tapes has its own.
• Below the scales, a line of text always shows the tier's current cut, e.g. "6 facets at 0-16-32-48-64-80".

Arbitrary mode (ticked in the gear dialog) replaces the tooth tape and the Symmetry/Offset fields with a single Indexes text box, where you type the tier's teeth by hand — separated by dashes, commas or spaces. Turning it on carries the tape's current teeth into the box; turning it back off needs an evenly spaced list, or it's refused with a tooltip explaining why.

Typing exact values

Every number on this page that can be typed follows the same rule: click it (or, for a scale, click its reading) to open a text box, and Enter or clicking away applies the value. This covers the Angle reading, the sub bar's Symmetry and Offset fields, the Indexes box in arbitrary mode, and the gear dialog's Number of teeth. Whatever Escape does in any of these fields, it never leaves edit mode while you're typing — on the Angle reading it cancels the typing outright; in the gear dialog it closes the whole dialog without applying.

The tier toolbar

Seven buttons sit at the bottom of the cutting instructions pane, in this order: New, Delete, Edit, Hide, Preform, Frosted, Comments. All but Comments act on the selected tier; a button that can't be used right now is greyed out, with a tooltip explaining why (hover it to see).

Below about 540px the pane shows two rows — New/Delete/Edit/Hide above Preform/Frosted/Comments, always that same split — and one row of all seven once the pane is wider than that (drag the handle between the pane and the render to widen it, up to 560px).

Selecting and editing tiers from the keyboard

With the pointer anywhere except a text field, a dialog or a dropdown:

None of these three fire while typing into a field (the cut name, a tier's notes, a slider readout…), with a <select> focused, or while a dialog or menu is open. ↑/↓ also do nothing while a whole-design mode — scale height, resize girdle or the cutting assistant — holds the design, since those modes' own toolbar is entirely inactive too. They do nothing harmful in edit mode either: the selection cannot leave the tier being edited, so pressing them just leaves it where it is.

Reordering tiers

Drag a row up or down to change where it's cut — within its own section only; a pavilion row can never be dropped into the crown table or the other way round. The keyboard equivalent, with a row focused, is Alt+↑ / Alt+↓, which moves it one place at a time. Every other row's id renumbers immediately to match the new cutting order.

Leaving edit mode

Two buttons at the bottom of the edit panel, and a key, all get you out:

• Done keeps everything you changed.
• Cancel undoes every change made since you entered edit mode — the angle, the depth, and the teeth all go back to where they started.
• Escape does the same as Cancel — except while a text box has focus (the Angle reading being typed into, say) or a dialog is open, where Escape is taken by that instead, and edit mode is left alone.

Edit mode also ends on its own if the tier being edited stops existing — a Delete, an undo of a New, or opening a different design.

Undo and redo

Every change on this page — reordering tiers, editing a tier's angle, depth or teeth, New, Delete, Hide/Show, Preform, Frosted, and the design's comments — goes on one edit history you can step through:

These shortcuts, and the Edit menu's Undo and Redo items, act on the page's history — not on a text box. If the pointer is inside a field you're typing into, the same keys undo your typing there instead, the ordinary way a text box works.

A whole edit-mode session — from opening it to Done — settles into edits the same way described above: dragging a scale is one undo per drag, but the wheel and the arrow keys on the Angle and Depth scales each apply and record immediately, so several wheel notches or key presses in a row make that many separate undo steps. The sub bar's tooth tape, by contrast, batches a whole drag, scroll or run of key presses into a single undo.

The Edit menu

Undo and Redo are greyed out when there's nothing to step through. Below them are transforms that rewrite the whole design at once, rather than one tier — which is why they live in a menu instead of the tier toolbar:

• Rotate by index opens its own mode; see Rotation by index.
• Resize girdle opens its own mode; see Girdle resizing.
• Scale height opens its own mode; see Tangent ratio height scaling.
• Manual optimizer opens its own mode; see Manual optimizer.
• Reverse index order and Flip crown and pavilion are greyed out — not built yet.

The stats box

The render's bottom-right corner shows the stone's facet count and three proportions, worked out from the stone as it stands right now — they update as you edit.

Every gesture and shortcut