Add a focus area to a scene

You can use the Focus areas tool to highlight your project areas and fade the background in the scene. This allows you to focus the viewers attention to specific areas. For example, you can highlight the project area of a redevelopment site and fade the rest of the scene. You can create multiple focus areas in a scene to highlight different locations at the same time.

The focus areas are saved in the scene and can be used in slides to share with stakeholders.

Add a focus area

To add a focus area, complete the following steps:

1. Click Add Layers on the Designer toolbar.
2. Click Focus areas to open the Focus area pane.

Do any of the following:
3. Click Draw a polygon to draw a focus area polygon.
   1. Click in the scene to start creating a focus area and click to add points.
   2. To finish the focus area, click the first vertex, double-click, or press Enter.
4. Click Draw a circle to draw a focus area circle.
   1. Click and drag to create a circular area of focus.
   2. Release the mouse to finish.
5. Click Select to select and edit the focus area.
6. Under Style, choose the style for the background:
   • Bright—The faded background is bright.
   • Dark—The faded background is dark.

   The selected style is applied to all focus areas in the scene.

7. In Outline, choose the outline color for the focus area:

   Do any of the following:

   1. Click Default to make the outline color black or white, depending on the chosen style. The outline automatically adjusts when changing the style.
   2. Click Custom to choose a custom color for the outline.
      • Choose a color from the color picker.
      • Create a custom color by the Hex, RGB, or HSV values.
   3. Click No outline to remove the outline from the focus area.
8. Click in different locations to add more focus areas.
9. Click Clear all to remove all focus areas.
10. Click Done when you are finished.

    A new focus areas is added under Focus areas at the bottom of the layer list in the Layer Manager pane.

Edit a focus area

To edit a focus area, complete the following steps:

1. Click Layer Manager to open the Layer Manager pane.
2. Select the focus area you want to edit under Focus areas.
3. Click Options and click Edit Focus Areas to open the focus area.

   You can also do any of the following under Options :

   • Click Zoom to to zoom to the extent of the focus area.
   • Click Move up or Move down to move the focus area up or down in the list.
   • Click Rename to rename the focus area.
   • Click Remove to delete the focus area.
Do any of the following:
4. Click Select to select and edit the focus area.
   1. Click a focus area and use the interactive handles to resize, rotate, or move the area.
   2. Click the focus area polygon or circle again to move individual vertices to reshape it.

      You can drag vertices in the middle of a segment to add vertices. This allows you to further reshape the polygon or circle.

   3. Click again to use the interactive handles.
   4. Press Delete to remove the focus area.
5. Click Draw a polygon to draw additional focus area polygons.
6. Click Draw a circle to draw additional focus area circles.
7. Under Style, edit the style.

   The selected style is applied to all focus areas in the scene.

8. In Outline, edit the outline color.
9. Click Clear all to remove all focus areas.
10. Click Done when you are finished.

Tip:

Press the Ctrl key to temporarily disable snapping to the orange visual cues. Release the Ctrl key to enable snapping again.