2013 HELP: V3.2 Building 101 Beginner's building

Beginner's building in OpenSIm
Updated 3/28/2019
-
The instructions here are for Firestorm. The details may not always apply to other viewers.
-

Land Right-click Window 
Right click on the parcel land

Click picture to enlarge

-

If you don't own land, you can practice building on one of the sandboxes listed here:

Sandboxes

---------------

Vocabulary

• Prim: Basic unit of construction.  Like a piece of wood to a carpenter.
• Megaprim:  A prim with dimensions over 10 x 10 x 10.  Obsolescent term.
• Sandbox: a parcel that lets anyone build (create, rez) things and has autoreturn set to several hours.
• Autoreturn:  A parcel setting that causes objects to be returned after a fixed time unless they set to the controlling group.
• Land Right-click Window:  A window offering access to the things you want to do with a parcel or the land in it. The secret of the right-click windows
• Edit Window and Tabs: A window with multiple tabs, each offering information and control related to aspects of building.  The tabs important to new learners are: General, Object, Texture, and Contents.
• -
• V3.2 Build Button (hammer)

Click on Build to create an object.  Cursor becomes your magic wand.  Click on the ground and you create a plywood box .5 meters on a side.  This is a prim.

***
Ready to Create
The Edit window appears, showing General tab.  The box will have colored lines showing grid directions.
-

Build/edit window

General tab

-
You can move the box around by dragging an arrowhead. 
***
A lot to learn? 
No.  This is not school.  Here you only learn what you need for what you want to do.  At the time you actually want to do it.  (JIT, Just-In-Time Learing)   Right now you probably want to find out enough about building in Second Life to be able to judge how it would fit into what you want to do.  So you are just exploring.  Probably all you want to learn is what is available and where you can get detailed information/instructions in case you want to use something later.
***
What do I do next? 
Now that you have made a box, you need to explore what you can do with it. 
Give the box a name you will recognize later.

• Close the edit window by a click on the x (upper right corner).  
• Right-click on the object to open the Object Right-click Window.

Object Right-click Window

-

The Object Right-click Window gives you a menu of things you can do with the object you just clicked on.  Main things:

• Edit it some more.
• Sit on it.
• Zoom in on it. See, Zoom, roam, and tag
• Take it with you. The secret of the right-click windows
• Take a copy with you (backup).
• Wear it.  Wear objects/edit them

Here are some ways to get familiar with building

• Edit your cube.  Click the object tab. Change the size of  the cube.
• Rez a full perm object that you own.   See what you can learn from the Edit menu.
• See what you can do with a full perm object that you own
• See what you can find out by editing an object that you do not own.  

Cautions

• Always take copies of parts and final builds into your inventory.
• Check the perms on a final build before you give out copies 
• If you edit an object you are wearing, do not log off until you drop it and take a copy.

Related

Textures overview  
Script Modding 101: Use scripts without knowing how
The Ivory Tower of Prims
Building 201. Linking prims into a single object
The ultimate guide to prim twisting

*****

• What do we do in Virtual Worlds? 
• Search on page with Google Chrome: Ctrl+f, search bar upper right 
• Google search this blog, column on right
• or put site:virtualoutworlding.blogspot.com at the end of the search terms
• What is Second Life?
• Annotated screen shots made with Jing
• Creative Commons License, attribution only.
• Second Life, Linden, SLurl, and SL are trademarks of Linden Research Inc.
• This blog is not affiliated with Second Life or anything else.  
• Ads are  from Google