Exploring the Work Plane

One of the huge advantages to modeling in modo is the Work Plane. This simple but highly effective tool will help you to efficiently and accurately create geometry, keep your objects aligned in space, and even model easily on strangely angled surfaces. Initially, this plane is fixed, but the user can edit it to allow for numerous working options. In this first look, you will start with the basics and look at more-detailed options when they are needed in future projects.

The Work Plane is the light-colored grid in the 3D viewport. This grid snaps to align itself to either the xy, xz, or yz plane as the perspective rotates to stay roughly perpendicular to the current perspective. When creating geometry, this is key to knowing what is happening in the viewport. If you choose to create geometry in the perspective view, clicking in open space can be quite ambiguous. After all, the depth of the view means that the point you clicked could be represented by a nearly infinite number of points between the screen and the ongoing space that falls under your cursor. The Work Plane takes away the guessing. When clicking in a 3D viewport, new geometry will be created on the Work Plane. So, if you want to create something on the groun....