# Place your first objects

The most common second-most-painful onboarding moment: things spawn somewhere unexpected, you can't find them, you scale one to zero by accident and lose it. This page is the fix. Five minutes of muscle memory.

![Build mode with the asset library expanded along the bottom, My Assets category active, ready to drag a chair or other prop into the empty scene](/files/fdiS1XZeIJNKlzV87sAW)

## What's getting in the way

User-testing notes flagged object placement as the #2 friction point after viewport navigation. The pattern is consistent: *"Items would often appear in random areas of the scene"*, *"Aligning objects was difficult"*, *"Scaling objects down to 0 made them unselectable and undeletable"*. The fixes below cover all three.

## How to do it

{% stepper %}
{% step %}

#### Open the asset library

It's docked along the bottom of the screen in Build mode. Drag the top edge upward to expand, or click the maximize button. Categories tab across the top: Characters, Furnishings, Mannequins, My Assets, Objects, Populators, Primitives, Roads, Sets, Vehicles.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### Drag the asset into the viewport

Click and drag a thumbnail. The library auto-minimizes the moment you start dragging so you can see the 3D scene. The asset lands at the cursor's projected ground point. Smart snapping (on by default) tries to land it on the terrain or on another surface you're hovering over.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### Confirm placement and select

Click the placed asset in the viewport. The transform gizmo and the contextual menu appear. The contextual menu has the swap, color, transform, details, and more-options controls.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### Adjust the position

Drag the gizmo arrows for axis-locked movement, the small squares between arrows for plane movement, the elevation handle for vertical lift. For precise placement, type values into the contextual menu's transform panel directly.
{% endstep %}

{% step %}

#### Lock it once it's right

Click the lock icon in the contextual menu's more-options. The object can't be selected from the viewport or the outliner until you unlock. Lock the terrain and any large populator backbone before you start adding props on top of them; you'll stop dragging the world by accident.
{% endstep %}
{% endstepper %}

## Avoiding the most common mistakes

{% hint style="warning" %}
**Don't scale all three axes to zero.** It makes the object unselectable from the viewport and unreachable from the gizmo. Recover via the [Scene Outliner](/build/scene-outliner.md): find the object by name, right-click, reset transforms.
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="warning" %}
**Don't lose objects off-screen.** Smart snapping plus a fast drag occasionally launches an object outside the viewport. Open the [Scene Outliner](/build/scene-outliner.md), select the row, press `F` to frame.
{% endhint %}

## Swapping models

If the chair you dragged in isn't quite the chair you wanted, click the object → swap-model icon in the contextual menu. The library reopens in swap mode and only shows alternatives the system recognizes as the same concept (chairs, in this case). One click to swap; the new asset inherits the original's position and rotation.

## Selecting multiple objects

The default click is single-selection. To select a group:

1. Click the **marquee** icon in the toolbar.
2. Drag a selection box across the viewport.
3. Apply a transform, swap, or save-as-set to the whole selection.
4. The marquee toggles off after one use; click again to re-engage.

## Related

* [Asset library](/build/asset-library.md)
* [Working with objects](/build/working-with-objects.md)
* [Transform](/build/transform.md)
* [Scene Outliner](/build/scene-outliner.md)
* [Sets](/build/sets.md)


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