Editing (Stretching) Question

Sometimes when I want to stretch an object that I bought, the grey boxes are so far away from the object itself that I can't see what I'm doing. Like I have to pull so far back to get the boxes on the screen that I can't really see the object I'm editing. Is there any way to move those boxes in closer, so I can see what I'm doing?

Unfortunately, no. You can't change where the handles are. You can certainly change your point of view, though, so that it won't matter where they are.

By the sound of it, you're probably zooming out to see the entire object at once, and then leaving your camera parked in one spot while trying to edit the object. Don't ever do that. Your camera should be in constant motion as you work. If a handle is too far away to grab, just float your camera on over to it, and work for a minute from that new point of view. Moving the camera in SL (or in any 3D modeling environment) should be as fluid, as natural, and as instinctive as turning your head in RL.

Make it a point to get in the habit of using the alt-mouse controls to move the camera constantly. Don't use mouselook; it's way too limiting. Work in third person mode, hold down alt, and then click and drag the mouse to move the camera around. Shift and ctrl, along with alt, are essential as well. It might take you a couple days to develop the habit if you're not used to it, but after that, you really will find yourself doing it naturally, without having to think about it at all. Those handles could be an inch away from your avatar, or 50 meters away; it won't make any difference.



So you know, when handles are far away like that, it's usually because the object contains cut prims. When you cut a prim, its visual and physical size will appear to change, but its bounding box (its actual inherent size) stays the same. You could cut away 95% of a cube, until all you've got visually is a little sliver, and the bounding box will remain the size of the full, uncut, cube.

If you're talking about sculpties, then most likely the creator didn't use the Maximize Scale option when he/she exported the sculpt map. Without that option turned on, the bounding box of a sculpty could be 10x10x10, and the visual size could be microscopic, or vise versa.

My best advice to you, in addition to what I said about mastering the camera controls, is to edit such objects outdoors. That way you don't run the risk of the handles appearing behind a wall or above a ceiling or something.

Besides Chosen's excellent advice:

If you can't see both the handles and the object clearly, focus in on the object and use the numeric entry windows instead.

Thank you both for the excellent information.