Grids

In BeamZe, everything is drawn on a grid. The grid is a 2D structure, composed of horizontal (X) axis and vertical (Y) axis. On each axis, you can have multiple edges. At the intersection of 2 edges, a node can be defined. Nodes can only exist at the intersection of 2 edges on the grid. The X axis goes from left to right, while the Y axis goes from bottom to top.

With a new structure, a grid is created. The default grid is composed of X edges from -5m to 5m, with an edge each half meter. On the Y axis, the edges goes from 0 to 5m, with an edge each half meter.

Adding an edge

In the grid interface, you can simply add a value, then hit the green plus sign.

Sometimes, it’s convinient to be able to add multiple edges at once. To do so, you can use the syntax begin:end:step syntax. All edges from begin to end, with a interval of step will be added. For example, 0:5:1 will add edges from 0 to 5, with a step of 1. This will add edges at 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. If some edges already exists, they’ll be ignored.

Removing an edge

To remove an edge, you can selected it in the list and hit the - red button. If no nodes is on the edge, it will be removed.

Cleaning edges

The other way to remove edges is to use the clean button. This will remove all edges that are not used by any node. This is useful when you have a lot of edges, and you want to remove the ones that are not used. It will not remove edges that are used by nodes. This can also lead to a zoom on the structure, if the extreme edges are removed.

Edges added by nodes

When adding a node using coordinates, the edge for the given coordinate will be added to the grid if not existing.