In this tutorial, we will get a little more familiar with the basic tools in the Document Window in DAZ^R Carrara^TM 6 Pro. You may wish to print this chart for reference. Open Carrara to a new Empty Scene and you should be automatically taken to the Assemble Room.

Let's place something in the scene. From the Menu bar, click Insert – Plane. You should see a flat plane added to the scene. Next, click Insert – Cube and a cube is centered on the flat plane. Let's do a test render. From the icon list on the left, click on the Test Render icon. Click and drag your mouse inside the Working Box to draw a rectangular selection around the plane and cube. Wait a few seconds and you should see the render. With the Move tool, click inside the Working Box to remove the render.

Let's take a look around the Working Box. You should see three grids. The flat horizontal grid represents the ground plane (XY). The vertical grid on the left represents the left wall (XZ) and the other grid represents the right wall (YZ) of the Working Box. On the two vertical grids, you can see yellow rectangular outlines that represent the "reflection" of the cube on these planes. You can use these outlines to judge the position of the cube within the 3D scene. For example, notice that the bottom edge of the outline touches the intersection of the vertical and horizontal grids. This tells us that the cube is setting on the flat plane. Let's move it a little and see what happens.

Click on the cube with the Move tool and you will see three control arrows projecting out from the center of the cube. This indicates that the cube is selected (active). We can use these arrows to move the cube. The blue arrow controls the movement of the cube along the Z axis, the red arrow controls movement along the Y axis and the green controls the X axis. If you forget this, you can remind yourself with the small diagram at the bottom left corner of the Working Box. OK, we are ready to move the cube. Place your mouse cursor over the blue arrow until it changes to a plus sign. Click on the blue arrow and drag downward to move the cube down until the bottom third of the cube is below the flat plane. Notice that the bottom third of the yellow outlines are now below the intersection of the two planes. Do another test render and you will only see the top two thirds of the cube. The bottom third is hidden by the flat plane. From the Menu bar, click Edit – Undo Move to put the cube back to its original position.

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