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Select and transform

Selecting is where every prefab edit starts: pick something, and the inspector on the right becomes that prefab’s transform while the gizmo appears on it in the view. This page covers picking things, the four ways to move them, and the flags (locked, hidden, grouped) that decide what a click can touch.

A monument selected, with the TRANSFORM inspector scrolled to its lower half: position, rotation, scale and the snap rows

Press S for the Select tool, then:

InputWhat it selects
Click a prefabThat prefab, replacing the selection
Ctrl and clickAdds or removes that one, for a multi-selection
Click one piece of a grouped custom prefabThe whole group (a pack placed by an imported map, or a broken monument). Hold Alt to pick just that piece
Click the same spot againThe next prefab behind the one you got, so you can reach something inside a monument
Shift and clickA menu of every prefab under the cursor, nearest first, with its distance. Choose one to select it on its own (a group member is taken alone, as Alt takes it)
Drag from empty groundA box. Plain replaces the selection, Ctrl adds to it, Alt removes from it
Click empty ground, or EscNothing, which clears the selection

A box selects prefabs whose pivot is inside it, so a very large prefab is caught by where it sits rather than by how far it reaches.

A click that appears to do nothing is usually telling you something. If the prefab under your cursor is locked or hidden, Creator says so in a toast rather than silently ignoring you.

The gizmo on the selection is the same in every one of these tools, and you pick the mode with 1 (move), 2 (rotate) and 3 (scale), from the tool strip beside the tool name at the top left of the view (SELECT, MOVE, ROTATE, SCALE), from the rail’s Select button, or from the Tool dropdown at the top of the inspector.

ToolThe gestureThe exact numbers
MoveDrag an axis arm to move along it, or drag the prefab itself to slide it across the groundThe Position X, Y and Z fields, each with a +/- button
RotateDrag one of the three axis rings to turn about that axis, or the larger outer ring to turn about your line of sightThe Rotation fields, each with -90, +90 and +/- buttons, plus CCW and CW about the world axis you pick with the X / Y / Z segment, in 15 degree steps or in your rotation snap step when that is on; each button names its step and axis, as in CCW 15 (world Y)
ScaleDrag the cube on an axis to scale that axis alone, or the center cube to scale all three at onceThe Scale fields, with Uniform scale lock to tie them together

The handles are colored by axis: X red, Y green, Z blue. The one under the pointer lights up, so you can see what a press will take before you press. Grabbing a handle always wins over picking the prefab behind it, and a press on a panel never reaches a handle.

A few details make the handles behave the way other 3D editors do:

  • Only the near half of an axis ring is a handle. The far half is drawn faint: it sits behind the selection and crosses the other rings, so it is left alone. Turn the camera if you need the other side.
  • A ring seen almost edge-on still works. Drag along the ring’s line and it turns.
  • With one prefab selected, the scale cubes sit on that prefab’s own axes, so dragging the X cube stretches the prefab along its own length even when it is turned. With several selected, the cubes use the world axes, unless the space is local (below).
  • Holding Shift snaps. A ring snaps to your rotation step (15 degrees unless you changed it), a scale cube to your scale step (0.25), and a move arm to the 1 meter grid. When a snap is turned on in the inspector’s Snap section, the drag snaps without Shift.
  • Esc or the right mouse button cancels a drag in flight. Everything goes back where it was and nothing is added to the undo history.
  • A scale drag cannot mirror a prefab. It never flips an axis to a negative number, and a prefab that is already mirrored stays mirrored. See negative scale.

Press X, click WORLD or LOCAL in the tool strip, or pick Space in the inspector, to choose which axes the gizmo uses. World (the inspector calls it Global) is the map’s own axes, and is where every map starts. Local puts the move arms, the rotate rings and the scale cubes on the selected prefab’s own axes, so you can slide a turned building along its own length or spin it about its own tilted up axis. With several prefabs selected, local space uses the axes of the one you clicked first. The choice is remembered between sessions, and it cannot change in the middle of a drag.

Snap to other prefabs, and to the tunnel grid

Section titled “Snap to other prefabs, and to the tunnel grid”

Hold Alt while you drag and the prefab’s origin snaps to the nearest other prefab’s origin within reach, or failing that, to the nearest face of another prefab’s bounding box. A small cross marks what it snapped to. On a move arm the snap only lines the prefab up along that arm. Alt also has a meaning at the moment you press, and the two never collide: Alt held as you press on a piece of a group selects that one piece, and Alt held while you drag snaps. To drag a whole group with the snap, click the group first, then press on it and hold Alt once the drag has started.

The tool strip shows WORLD, LOCAL and TUNNEL only in the tools that move prefabs. X and Ctrl+Shift+T work in every tool: pressed in a brush or another tool, they still change the saved setting, and the message that confirms it says the setting applies when you next move a prefab. The tunnel lattice belongs to the map, so in the prefab workspace TUNNEL is hidden and the snap does not apply; your setting is kept for when you return to the map.

The tunnel-grid snap is a toggle: Ctrl+Shift+T, the TUNNEL segment of the tool strip, or Tunnel grid snap in the inspector’s Snap section. While it is on, every move puts the prefab’s origin on the lattice the game lays its train tunnels on (3 meters across, 1.5 meters up, the same rounding the game applies to a tunnel entrance), so a hand-placed tunnel piece or entrance lines up with the generated network. Every cell center of that lattice sits on those steps, so a piece can always reach one exactly.

G drops the whole selection onto the ground. Ctrl with the arrow keys nudges it by a fixed step (the Nudge m slider in Preferences), and a burst of nudges lands as one undo step rather than twenty.

Ctrl+M moves the selection to the pointer: point at the ground anywhere in view and press it. The middle of the selection (the point the gizmo sits on) goes to that spot and everything selected moves with it, keeping its arrangement and its rotation. The height above the ground is kept too, measured at that middle point: a prefab that sat on the ground lands on the ground, and one you had raised stays raised by the same amount. A group spread over uneven ground keeps its own shape, so press G afterwards if each piece should sit on the terrain. It is one undo step, it works in every tool, and it is the quick way to carry a selection across a large map: fly there, point, press. With the pointer over the sky, a panel or beyond the edge of the map, nothing moves and Creator says so. With the tunnel-grid snap on, the first prefab selected lands on the lattice, as in a drag. The key can be changed under Preferences > KEYBINDS, where it is listed as Move selection to pointer.

Ctrl+Shift+C copies the selected prefab’s position, rotation and scale, and Ctrl+Shift+V pastes them onto everything selected. To copy one of the three on its own, right-click the prefab (or use the EDIT menu or the inspector’s ... menu) and choose Copy Position, Copy Rotation or Copy Scale. Paste Transform and Ctrl+Shift+V paste exactly what you copied last, so a copied position moves the selection without turning or resizing it. A paste is one undo step however many prefabs it lands on.

Beside each Rotation field, -90 and +90 subtract or add 90 to that angle and +/- negates the angle (30 becomes -30). Changing one angle is a quarter turn about that axis only when the other two angles are zero; CCW and CW always turn about a world axis. Beside each Position field, +/- negates the coordinate. The X, Y and Z fields of all three sections line up in one column, whatever buttons a row carries. Positions are measured from the world origin, the center of the map, whichever gizmo space you chose, so +/- on X moves the prefab to the opposite side of the origin. Each button is one undo step and goes through the same snapping as a typed value.

Mirror Duplicate copies the selection mirrored across one axis, through the middle of the selection (the point the gizmo sits on), as one undo step. Right-click a selected prefab, or open the ... menu at the top of the inspector, and choose Mirror Duplicate across X, across Y or across Z. Ctrl+Shift+D, and the EDIT menu’s Mirror Duplicate row (which names its axis, as in Mirror Duplicate across X), repeat the axis you chose last (X until you choose one). The originals stay where they are.

The copies are turned to face the mirrored way, never given a negative scale (see negative scale), so they stay safe on a server. The cost is that a lopsided prefab keeps its own left and right: a building with its door on the left side still has it on the left after the mirror.

The Snap section of the inspector holds three independent snaps and their steps: movement (1 meter by default), rotation (15 degrees) and scale (0.25). Rotation and scale apply to values you type and to what you drag with the rings and cubes (holding Shift while you drag does the same for one gesture), movement applies to values you type, and they are remembered between sessions. Snap to Ground in the same section is the button form of G.

These three are how you work inside a busy map without fighting it. All of them are on the EDIT menu, on the right-click context menu over a prefab, and on the ... menu at the top of the inspector.

The right-click menu over a selected prefab: lock, hide, duplicate, snap to ground, the transform entries and delete with their keys, then the workspace and monument entries

StateWhat it doesGetting back
Locked (Ctrl+Shift+L)The prefab can still be selected and inspected, but it refuses to move, scale or be deleted, and the gizmo draws grayed outUnlock All, Ctrl+Alt+L
Hidden (Ctrl+Shift+H)The prefab stops drawing and stops being selectable, and it leaves the selectionUnhide All, Ctrl+Alt+H
Groups (Ctrl+Shift+1 to 9)Tags the selection as group 1 to 9. Ctrl and the digit recalls it laterAssign the group again, or assign an empty selection over it

Locked and hidden are session states and are undoable like any edit. Neither is written into your map, so nothing you lock or hide changes what a server sees.

SectionWhat is in it
HeaderThe prefab’s readable name, its full asset path underneath (hover for the whole thing), and the ... menu. A multi-selection says how many are selected and that it is editing the first.
Tool and SpaceThe four transform modes, and the gizmo’s space: Global (the map’s axes) or Local (the selected prefab’s own axes).
Map NameMonuments only: your own name for the monument on the in-game map, and one line saying whether it replaces the game’s label or sits under the game’s name. See monument map names.
Swap For PackMonuments only: put one of your packs exactly where the monument stands, keeping its roads, rails and name. See swapping a monument for a pack.
Swapped MonumentOn a piece of a pack that was swapped in: the monument it stands in for, and the name it shows on the in-game map.
Position, Rotation, ScaleThe numbers, editable. Each committed edit is one undo step.
SnapThe three snaps, their steps, Tunnel grid snap, Snap to Ground and Center gizmo.
Prefab ModifiersMonuments only: one button per terrain mask the monument actually carries, named Apply Height Mask, Apply Splat Mask, Apply Biome Mask, Apply Topology Mask or Apply Alpha Mask, plus Refresh Spawn Instances.

Prefab Modifiers is how you re-apply a monument’s own authored terrain work after you have sculpted near it: the monument’s baked mask is stamped onto the terrain again, as one undo step, and the panel says so when the re-stamp changed nothing. A monument with no authored mask for a channel does not offer that button at all.

Negative scale, and why Creator argues with it

Section titled “Negative scale, and why Creator argues with it”

A negative scale axis mirrors a prefab. A mirrored prefab looks right in the editor. The problem is not the file, it is the game: a negative axis breaks colliders and physics once the map is on a server, which is why Creator gives you tools to find and fix it rather than a silent pass.

  1. Open Scene Hierarchy (H) and pick the NEG filter. It lists every prefab with a negative axis and counts them.
  2. Click Make All Scales Positive to flip every one of them positive, map-wide, as a single undo step.
  3. To stop them appearing at all, turn on the positive-only scale guard in Preferences; typed negative values are then clamped as you enter them.

One thing you did is one step on the undo stack, including a drag that moved twenty prefabs and a whole-map operation. Ctrl+Z reverts it and Ctrl+Y puts it back, and the EDIT menu names what each one will do, so you can see what is about to be reverted before you commit to it.

VIEW > History opens the whole stack as a list, oldest step at the top. The step you are on is marked with >, and the steps you have undone but can still redo are dimmed. Click any step to go straight back (or forward) to just after it, as one jump: everything later is undone, or everything up to it is redone. The first row, Start (before the oldest step kept), undoes everything the list holds. The list follows whichever document you are editing, the map or a prefab, and updates as you work. A new edit after an undo drops the dimmed steps, exactly as it does with Ctrl+Z.