Icons are the main ingredient of 3DTop. They represent the files that are present in the directory where you started "3dtop.exe". Double-clicking with the left mouse-button on the icon Opens the file. 3DTop will perform the default action you've set with your normal desktop. In most cases this will start a program but when the file is a data-file like for instance a midi-file it will start your media-player and play the midi-file.
Remember, it will always perform the default action.
The function "Open" can also be chosen with a popup-menu that appears when you click with the right mouse-button on the icon.
Underneath this you'll find the item called "Disable 3DTop on Open". This is a handy little thing that enables you to use applications that have problems with 3DTop, without quitting and restarting 3DTop. When you "Open" a file with this menu-item checked, 3DTop will minimize itself to the Windows-taskbar, the normal desktop appears (Yes, 3DTop is like any normal application but occupies the entire screen) and your video-card is totally freed from any old data of 3DTop so other applications can use the video-card for 100%.
To restart 3DTop, simply click on or "maximize" the 3DTop-icon in the Windows-taskbar.

The icons can appear in several shapes that can be chosen with the popup-menu. These are the shapes from top to bottom:
- poster
- cube
- piramid
- sphere
- 3DModel
  With the 3DModel item you can make an icon appear as a 3D-model. We suggest you use the import3d plug-in first to convert 3ds-models to (a)bmf-models. Why bmf-models ? Because these kind of models are in a format that is 100% compatible to OpenGL so it can be loaded without converting it each time it is loaded.
This menu-item has the following sub-menu-items:

- Animate.
If the model had an animation in it, you can enable or disable the animation.
- Animate once on open.
Normally, when you "open" an icon it will be rotated quickly and moved towards you before the application starts. When this menu-item is checked the animation of this model will be performed once before starting the application.

- Follow camera-path once on open.
Same as above, only the selected camera-path is followed once :

- Select a camera.

- Force all double-sided.
If some parts of a model appear to be missing, select this.

- Disable any transparency.
If you don't like to see transparent parts, select this.

- Try to get model from "associated" application.
3DTop can extract 3D-models that are contained inside applications. With this item 3DTop will search for a 3D-model in the application that belongs to this icon .

- Load new model.
Allows you to load a model of the abmf- or bmf-format.

- Then you will see a list of all models that are loaded into memory. If you start 3DTop without any 3DModels you will not see a list ofcourse. Each time you choose a 3DModel it will be loaded into memory and if you choose a new one the old one will stay in memory and will appear in this list as long as 3DTop runs or you choose the following menu-Item:

- Remove unused one from list.
  Says it all, the models that are in memory and are not used anymore will be removed from the list and from memory.

If you restart 3DTop, only the 3DModels that are actually used are loaded and will appear in the list.

The icons can be resized also : Press Shift on the keyboard , press the Left mouse button and move the mouse left to decrease the size or right to increase the size.

You will notice that before these shape-menu-items there are several other menu-items:

- Focus on this Object.
Whatever way you move, this object will always stay in the centre of the screen.    Nice for when you're placing objects or you want to look at an object from all    angles, with the cursor-keys you can actually walk around it very easily.

- Grab this.
A little robot will attach itself to the icon. This way you can select(grab) several icons at the same time and do things on all of them at the same time.

- Cut & Copy.
These have the same function as on the normal desktop.

 

Below the shapes you will find the menu-items:

- Spinning.
Each icon can spin around it's rotation axis by choosing this function. You'll notice that the mouse-pointer changes its shape into a left/right arrow, this means that by moving the mouse left or right you change the speed of the spinning. When you are content with the speed you've chosen, press the left-mouse-button once and the icons keeps spinning with this speed. If you would like to cancel the whole operation press the right mouse-button once.

- Imploding.
Works the same as spinning but makes the icon Shrink&Grow automatically.This function is a special kind of rotation, so you can either have an icon Spinning or Imploding, but not both at the same time.

- "Un"moveable.
When you select this, the icon can not be moved anymore by clicking on it with the left mouse-button and dragging the icon. All other functions remain working, so you can actually still move the icon by grabbing it and moving the robot, hence the "Un".

- Hide name.
Checking this will hide the name.

- Rename.
This will popup a small window that enables you to change the name of the icon. This name is for your own use only, it will not make any changes to the name or the function of the file. If you're done with typing in the new name and you are content with the result press "Return" or "Enter" on your keyboard. If you would like to cancel the whole operation press "Esc" on your keyboard once.

- "Windows"-properties.
This is the same as when you choose "Properties" of a file on the normal desktop and will enable you to change the icon-bitmap, shortcut-name etc...

- Delete.
This will move the icon from 3DTop to the recycle bin. 3DTop will ask you to confirm this action.