Sometimes a design is going to have the same feature used multiple times. When designing from the ground up in VISI, it’s easy to draw these features once, and then copy and translate it as many times as you need it throughout your design.
First start by drawing the original shape in the VISI workfile. Any construction methods will work here as long as the end product is made of 2-D wireframe elements. The “Translation” tool is started by clicking on the first option in the “Edit” dropdown menu. The software then prompts you to select elements. Either click on the ones that you want to translate, or window around the feature to select all wireframe components.
From here the software gives two options, one of which is shown in the video demonstation above. By clicking on the “Incremental Translation” button in the left-hand secondary toolbar, you are given a dialog box allowing numerical definition in the direction of the X, Y, and Z axes, as well as the option to either move (end with only 1 copy), copy (end with the original as well as one additional copy), or multiple copy (end with as many copies as the user specifies). After specifiying all values, click “OK” and the translation is complete.
The other available translation option asks you to select a reference point on the wireframe. After picking a point you can select another point anywhere to drop the original elements with respect to the originally selected reference point. This method is less precise than the incremental translation, but allows for more flexibility.
