Using the Tools Window in Axiom for Terraforming and Painting
The Tools Window is where you pick what you want to do to the world: painting, reshaping terrain, and creating selections. Open it to browse the available tools, then choose one to work with. Below the tool list you will find the tool options, which hold the settings for whichever tool is currently active.
Selections
Selections define which part of the world a tool or operation affects. The Box Select Tool works between two points: click one spot, drag to a second spot, release, then fine-tune the result with the gizmos. Press Enter to confirm the selection. The Magic Select Tool grabs blocks of one type that sit next to each other; the Magic Select Count setting controls how many connected blocks a builder tool picks up this way. To drop a selection entirely, press Enter again.
Selections can be grown or shrunk with Expand selection by and Shrink selection by. Shrinking trims the selection down to the non-air blocks inside it. You can also fill a selection straight from your hotbar by clicking a block there.
Terraforming tools
- Fill places a block throughout the selection. Variants narrow this down: fill top and fill bottom work on the upper and lower edges, fill walls covers the horizontal edges, fill outline covers every edge, and noise fill scatters a noise pattern through the selection. fill nearest swaps air for the closest non-air block.
- Sculpt Draw reshapes terrain, pushing and pulling blocks according to the surface direction.
- Slope builds an incline between two points: click once to set the target, then move the pointer elsewhere and click-drag to draw the slope.
- Extrude pulls geometry outward; a tip notes you can press to extrude a point.
- Other tools in the same family include Elevation, Flatten, Rock, Roughen, Blend, Fill Nearest, and Text.
Painting and block choice
Some tools need a block to paint or place. The active block slot shows the current one, and clicking its icon lets you switch. When you search for a block, pressing Enter adds the first result to your hotbar. Right-clicking a block in the world replaces it with whatever block you are holding.
Operating tools
Tools respond to mouse buttons, and several use the scroll wheel. Depending on the tool, scrolling can clone, move, nudge, smear, or stack. Clicking can extend or magic-select. Holding left-click breaks blocks very fast, and holding gives access to more options. Where a tool uses scroll for an action such as Nudge or Adjust Speed, that is the scroll wheel's job in that context. Holding the X, Y, or Z key locks scrolling to that axis. You can swap what the left and right mouse buttons do with Swap Left/Click Click.
Radius-based tools expose Adjust Tool Radius. Preview rendering switches off automatically past a certain radius.
Clipboard and history
Copy a selection to the clipboard, then paste it to begin a placement. The clipboard holds the blocks you copied; if nothing has been copied, a warning tells you it is empty. Axiom also records block changes so you can undo and redo. The history window lists those changes: left-clicking rewinds through them, and right-clicking inspects one.
Warnings to expect
Rotating a build by angles that are not multiples of 90 degrees loses information, and the original may be hard to restore; the same applies to non-integer scaling. A separate warning concerns the `spectatorsGenerateChunks` gamerule: if it is false, the Editor UI will run into serious problems, so it should be set to true.