I have two questions as a beginner to modding:

1) It's a little bit of a pain to have to navigate in 3 dimensions to move an object from an arbitrary location to another arbitrary location. Is there a way I can, say, move an object to overlap another object, or something I can press to automatically move that object next to a given object? I have snap to angle, etc. on, so the fit is good, it's just a pain to have to rotate around to figure out in what directions I need to move items.

2) Flow. What items connect to what? If I've got a hallway piece from a small room set, what kind of object will connect to the other side of that? How iwll I know without looking through all of my options?

I'm still learning so I'll try my best. As for question 1, no, not really. Pain on!

As for question 2, as far as I can tell the naming convention is key. Where itemObjectDoor4b may only line up properly with itemObjectHall4b as opposed to itemObjectDoor4b matching up with itemObjectHall5c. You can use the Filter field in the Object Window to help track down matching parts.

Takes a while to get used to it, and they keep changing the name conventions from game to game... just look at the patterns in the names:
For example, some room pieces are named "front" while others "side". You don't want to connect a "front" to a "side" because you'll get mismatched meshes and/or textures, so you only connect them with corners, and same thing with corners that are marked L(eft) and R(right).

If you plan a bit ahead, you can just drop piece after piece and snap one right behind the other.. so for example, if you are making a room, you drop a "front", and you don't rotate the piece. but rather the camera, then keep on dropping "fronts" and they all be aligned for easy snaps without the need to rotate.

To move an object without having to drag it all over the place, you can forego the duplicate and drag step and do a copy and paste. Select the object and do a CTRL+C. Slide your view over to where you want it and point at the floor next to where you and do a CTRL+V.

This lets you easily use statics you've already placed, even if they are at different elevations.

You still have to move around a little bit, but not having to drag something over with you then adjust its position on the Z-axis, saves some time.

Thank you for the quick responses!



low8all: (1) svcks. Is there maybe a way to "put myself" at z=0 so that when I drop something from the render window it starts at z=0?
(2)

SystemShock: Let's take DweRmSmCorInHoleL01, a small room corner that's an open hole on one side. So I'd want to connect another L01 to that, or something? What kind of something?

G.B. Jackson: That's actually pretty brilliant. Then even if It's a new object I can pull it in, copy it, delete it, then do that to get it near another object.

Take a clue from the count column... it's been only used once in the game, so it is a very rare piece, probably for a specific setting. If you want to see where it was used and how, and what could you attach to it, right click on it, and select Use Info. You'll see it was used inside Mzulft02 (the second cell in the Mzult ruins). Just double click on Mzulft02, and the render window will change to that cell and focus on that particular piece.

I do the select, CTRL+D (duplicate in place), and drag (holding down X and Y for the X and Y directions) with grid on. No need to rotate, no need to mess with the Z axis, or anything. Works for me.

CTRL+D (duplicate in place) works for that.