What are manipulators

Manipulators are tools for managing objects in a scene. You can select the desired manipulator on the toolbar or using hotkeys. To work on animations, you will need manipulators to select, move and rotate objects.

Open the cube.casc scene to complete the following tasks

• Switch to point controller mode
• Select the selection tool (Q)
• Click on point controllers on the cube to select them. The highlighted points will turn yellow.
• Hold LMB and move the mouse so that a red frame appears. You can select several point controllers at once with a frame.
• Hold Shift to add new controllers to the selection or exclude the selected controllers from the group.

• Select all the point controllers of the cube using the frame and switch to the translate tool (W)
• Choose arrows of different axes and move the cube along each of them while holding LMB.
• Select the plane icons between the arrows and move the cube along the selected plane.
• Click inside the circle in the center of the manipulator and move the cube freely in the plane of the screen.

• Use the frame to select all point controllers of the cube.
• Select the rotation manipulator (E)
• Choose different axes and rotate the cube along each of them. 
• Select the outer circle of the manipulator - this will allow you to rotate the object in the plane of the screen.
• If you choose the space between the axes, you can rotate the object freely in all directions.

You can choose any point of the cube as a pivot! 

• Without removing the selection, click on one of the point controllers with RMB to rotate the cube around it.

The manipulator can be in local or global modes. The mode switching button is located on the toolbar next to the manipulators. 

• Select all point controllers of the cube and select the rotation tool (E)
• Switch to the local mode (~) of the manipulator and rotate the cube.
• In local mode, the axis of the manipulator will correspond to the axes of the object and will rotate with it.
• Return to global mode (~).