Everything takes place in a cage. It's not much of a cage really, since the model can walk right through it, but it does help you with your orientation as you look at the model from different angles.

To change the camera angle, hold the right mouse button and move the mouse. To zoom in and out, use the mouse wheel (if your mouse has one) or the up/down cursor keys (for fine control) or the page-up/page-down keys (for coarse control).

In the middle of the "floor" you'll see red, white, and yellow axis arrows. Red is the Y axis (front to back), yellow is the X axis (side to side), white is the Z axis (top to bottom).

To select part of the model, click on them with the left mouse button. To select multiple parts, hold the control key as you press the mouse button. To drag the selected parts around, hold the left button down as you move the mouse.

When you drag something, it will be dragged in one of the oblique planes - XY (ground), YZ (side), or XZ (front). The drag plane can be selected by changing the camera angle as described above. The current drag plane is indicated by highlighting the corresponding sides of the cage.

If you change a property while multiple objects are selected, the change will be applied to all selected objects of the same type as the one shown in the property window.

If clockwork motors are selected, the right pane shows you a two-dimensional display of the motion of a joint or slider. It's a bit like a seismograph, with a wave scrolling from left to right. A red line is drawn to indicate the position of the joint on the wave - the intersection of the wave and the line indicates what position the joint should be in (it won't necessarily be there though, if the joint doesn't have enough force, or if another motion is also trying to pull it somewhere else, but more about that later).

If a network behavior is selected, the right pane shows the network and allows you to edit the network. Network behaviors are described in more detail on this page.

There's one little catch, though... When you copy and paste parts of the model, the parts are pasted in right where the originals were when they were copied to the clipboard. It's helpful to move the original parts out of the way before pasting the new parts.

The first button controls symmetric editing. Symmetric editing is a feature that makes it twice as easy to create and edit laterally symmetric models. When symmetric editing is enabled, you will create things in pairs (you'll get a left thing and a right thing), and any editing operations will affect both of the objects.

The second controls snap. When snap is enabled, anything you drag around in the 3D view will be positions to the nearest quarter inch (or quarter meter - you may define the units as you please). If you position an object by entering coordinates in the property view, your coordinates will take effect unmolested - snapping only applies to mouse-drag actions in the 3D view. I never turn snap off, but if you want to, you may.

The third edit mode button controls follow. When follow is enabled, the camera will follow the currently selected object. This is helpful if you select the torso of a creature that's walking around. This is nauseating if you select the ankle of such a creature.

Then there's buttons to turn the status line and toolbars on and off, and to rearrange the toolbars along the top of the window.