Manual optimizer

The manual optimizer shows your stone many times over, side by side, each with a slightly different crown height and pavilion depth, so you can compare them by eye and pick the proportions that look best. Every version is your own design made taller or flatter the same way Tangent ratio height scaling does it: each facet turns and moves so all its meets still meet, and the girdle's outline, the table's size and the index teeth stay as they are. Under the grid, a tilt performance graph shows how much light the stone you picked returns as it tilts.

Opening it

Choose Edit > Manual optimizer from the menu bar.

The menu item is greyed out, with a tooltip saying why, when there's no design loaded (a plain .obj mesh has no facets to re-cut), or when another mode — editing a tier, scale height, resize girdle, the cutting assistant or tilt performance — is already open. Finish or leave that mode first, then open the manual optimizer.

What the screen shows

The top bar's mode readout, at its right-hand end, reads Manual optimizer while it's open.

• On the left, in place of the cutting instructions, is the Heights grid, a picture of the stone in every cell, and under it the Tilt performance graph of the stone in the middle.
• In the middle is the stone itself, at the heights you last picked from the grid, drawn with the Deterministic renderer like the pictures in the grid (see below). You can turn and zoom it as usual.
• On the right, in place of the render settings, are the optimizer's settings, then the Lighting settings, then Cancel and Done.

Reading the grid

Each row is a crown height and each column a pavilion depth, both written as a multiple of your design's own: 1.20× is 20% taller, 0.83× about a sixth flatter.

• The top row has the tallest crowns, and they get flatter going down (Crown ↓ flatter).
• The left column has the deepest pavilions, and they get shallower going right (Pavilion → shallower).
• So the top-left cell is the tallest stone of the grid, the bottom-right the flattest, and the middle cell, drawn with a dashed edge, is the heights the grid is centred on — your design as it was when you opened the optimizer, until you zoom the grid in (below).
• The cell the stone in the middle shows has a highlighted edge.

Every picture in the grid shows its stone face up, looking straight down on the table, the way a stone is usually judged. Turning or zooming the stone in the middle leaves the grid as it is.

The grid fills in a few cells at a time, the middle first and then outwards; a bar under it counts the cells still being drawn, and you can use the grid while it fills. The cells are drawn with the Deterministic renderer, so they arrive quickly and without noise.

So that the stone in the middle looks like the pictures in the grid, opening the optimizer switches the renderer to Deterministic if you were using Monte Carlo or Flat. Leaving it, with Done, Cancel or Escape, switches back to the renderer you had. The switch isn't a change to your design, so Undo doesn't step through it, and it doesn't change the renderer the studio remembers for next time.

The tilt performance graph

Under the grid is the Tilt performance graph of the stone in the middle: the same graph, measured the same way, as the Tilt performance analyzer draws. The stone is tilted from face up out to 33° one way (Tilt X, the left half) and then the other (Tilt Y, the right half), and the curves show how bright it looks at each tilt with even light (ISO) and with light from behind you (COS), how much of it windows, and how much of its light your head blocks. A solid line is the whole stone, a dotted one the table alone.

Under the graph are the heights it was measured for, and each curve's value face up: the whole stone's, then the table's alone in brackets.

Point at the graph to read it at any tilt, as in the Tilt performance analyzer: a line follows the pointer with a dot on each curve, the line under the graph names the tilt (for example Tilt X 20°), and each curve's value at that tilt replaces its face-up value, the table's in brackets. The point on the graph nearest the pointer, on any curve, solid or dotted, is ringed with its value written beside it in its curve's colour (a dotted curve's in brackets), so you can read a value straight off the curve you are pointing at. Move the pointer off the graph and the ring goes and the values go back to face up. Pointing doesn't turn the stone in the middle, which stays as you left it. While the graph is being measured again, pointing at it does nothing.

When you pick other heights, by clicking a cell, moving with the arrow keys or dragging across cells, the graph is measured again for the new stone once you stop, which takes a second or two; until then the last graph stays up, faded, and the line under it reads Measuring…. Clicking or arrowing from cell to cell quickly, or holding an arrow key down, only measures the one you stop on, and going back to heights already measured shows their graph at once. A change to the Head shadow half-angle measures it again too.

The settings

• Subdivisions: how many pictures the grid has on each side — 3, 5, 7, 9 or 11, so 9, 25, 49, 81 or 121 pictures. It starts at 5. An odd number keeps a middle cell. A bigger grid takes longer to fill, though you can keep using the studio while it does.
• Crown height range: how much taller the top row's crowns are, and flatter the bottom row's, than the middle row's, as a percentage from 0% to 100%. At 100% the top row's crowns are twice the middle's height and the bottom row's half; the rows between step evenly from one to the other. At 0% every row is the same. It starts at 20%.
• Pavilion height range: the same for the pavilion, across the columns: at 100% the left column's pavilions are twice the middle's depth and the right column's half.
• Shown: the crown and pavilion heights of the stone in the middle, as multiples of the design you opened the optimizer on. These are what Done keeps.

Drag a slider and the grid changes when you let go; or click its reading to type an exact value, and press Enter. With a slider focused, the arrow keys move it a step at a time (one step of Subdivisions is to the next odd number: 3 to 5, 5 to 7, and so on up to 11).

Lighting

The Lighting card is the render settings' own Lighting section: the lighting model, Flat background, Head shadow color, Head shadow half-angle and Separate window color. They are the same settings, not a copy of them: a change here lights the stone in the middle and every picture in the grid, and is still there in the render settings after you leave the optimizer. The grid redraws a moment after you change one.

Picking heights

Click a cell to see it in the middle

Click any cell and the stone in the middle changes to that cell's heights, drawn at full size, so you can look at it closely, turn it and compare it with the others. The grid itself stays as it is, so you can click from cell to cell. The tilt performance graph is measured again for the stone you clicked.

Clicking a cell also puts the grid's keyboard cursor, a ring, on it. From there the arrow keys move from cell to cell, and the stone in the middle follows each step straight away, just as if you had clicked the cell (see From the keyboard below).

Drag across cells to zoom the grid in on them

Press on one cell and drag to another, and the cells between them are lit as a rectangle. When you let go, the grid zooms in on that rectangle: its top-left cell becomes the grid's new top-left (the tallest stone), its bottom-right cell the new bottom-right (the flattest), and the grid is centred on the rectangle's middle. The subdivisions stay the same, so the same number of pictures now covers a narrower spread of heights, and the two range sliders show the new spreads. The stone in the middle changes to the new centre.

A rectangle with an even number of rows or columns has its middle between two cells; the new centre is then half-way between their heights. A rectangle only one column wide leaves every column the same pavilion depth (a pavilion range of 0%), and one row tall every row the same crown height; raise the range slider again to spread them out.

To go back to a wider grid, use Undo (below), or raise the range sliders.

From the keyboard

The grid has a keyboard cursor: a ring round one cell, the cell the stone in the middle shows. Click a cell, or Tab to the grid, and the arrow keys work on the grid. If nothing else has the keyboard, the first arrow key you press just brings the cursor to the grid, on the cell shown, without changing anything; the next ones move it.

• ↑ ↓ ← → move the cursor one cell at a time, and the stone in the middle takes the new cell's heights at once, as a click on it would. The grid stays as it is. The cursor stops at the edges of the grid.
• Hold an arrow key down to run along a row or column. The stone in the middle keeps up as best it can and ends on the cell you stop on; the tilt performance graph is measured only for that one.
• Enter and Space do nothing on the grid.
• Hold Shift and press the arrow keys to light a rectangle from the cell the cursor was on, the way dragging across cells does. The stone in the middle doesn't change while you do. Let go of Shift and the grid zooms in on it, exactly as if you had dragged it with the mouse.
• Escape while you are still holding Shift drops the rectangle without zooming in, and the cursor goes back to the cell it started from. Without a rectangle, Escape leaves the optimizer as usual.

While the cursor is in the grid, these keys work only on the grid: they don't turn the stone, move through the cutting instructions or trigger anything else in the studio.

Keeping or discarding the change

• Done keeps the heights shown in the middle, as one step of the studio's Undo, and brings back the cutting instructions and the render settings. The cutting instructions show the new angles.
• Cancel puts every facet back exactly as it was when you opened the optimizer, and records nothing.
• Escape does the same as Cancel, unless you are typing a value into a slider's reading, when it only cancels the typing, or growing a rectangle with Shift, when it only drops the rectangle.

Changes to the Lighting settings are kept either way: they are render settings, not part of the design. Whichever way you leave, the renderer goes back to the one you had before you opened the optimizer.

Undo and redo

While the optimizer is open, Undo and Redo — the Edit menu's items, and Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Z and Shift+Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y) — step through your changes in the optimizer, one at a time: each cell clicked, each rectangle, and each slider let go or value typed. Moving through the grid with the arrow keys is one step however many cells you cross, so one Undo takes you back to the cell you started from; a click, a rectangle or a slider starts a new step. Undoing a rectangle brings the wider grid back.

After Done, the whole session is one step of the studio's own Undo: Cmd+Z / Ctrl+Z puts the design back as it was before you opened the optimizer, however many cells you clicked on the way.

Every gesture and shortcut

See also

• Tangent ratio height scaling, which changes the crown and pavilion heights the same way, one exact ratio at a time, with gauges.
• Tilt performance analyzer, the full tilt performance tool: the same graph, with pointing that also turns the stone to the tilt, curves you can switch off, other tilt ranges and a download.