Creating Shapes

The key concept of BURRTOOLS is shapes. A shape is simply a definition of an object in 3-D space and consists of a collection of voxels (space units). These voxels in turn may have their own characteristics such as state and colour. Note that this definition also includes shapes made out of voxels that are attached to each other by only a single edge, just a corner, or even are completely separated in space. The solver certainly won't bother... but how these shapes could be crafted in the workshop is beyond the scope of the program.

All functions and tools for creating and editing shapes — once the grid type is set — are located on the Entities tab which has — from top to bottom — three main sections (Figure EntitiesTab):

Figure: Creating shapes on the Entities tab

The Shapes panel

This section is mainly a list of the available shapes and has the tools for creating and managing the shapes. Shapes to be edited can be selected in this list (→CreatingShapes ).

The Edit panel

This section provides the tools to build or edit the currently selected shape. This panel contains a series of subtabs with several tools for adjusting the Size of the shapes, Transform them in 3-D space, and some extra editing Tools . Below these subtabs there's a toolbar with the devices for actually constructing the shapes in the 2-D grid at the bottom of the panel (→ BuildingShapes).

The Colours panel

This panel contains — besides a list of the available colours — the tools to create and edit custom colours which can be assigned to the voxels of the shapes. These colours can be merely ornamental or can have a serious impact on the way the solver will work by imposing restrictions on the possible placements of the pieces (→ Adding Colour).