QUAT(nged)

💖 NAME 💖

Bestie, meet quat(nged) from BRL-CAD User Commands — the command to get or set the view orientation as a quaternion. Slay. 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

quat
quat a b c d

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

Okay so quat gets or sets the current view rotation as a unit quaternion with components ordered (a, b, c, d) — that is, (x, y, z, w), where (x, y, z) is the vector part and w is the scalar part. No cap, that ordering matters. 🦋

• No arguments — returns the current view rotation matrix as a quaternion, formatted as four space-separated floating-point values with 12 significant digits: a b c d. Literally just the numbers, bestie. ✨
• Four arguments a b c d — sets the view rotation from the given quaternion. Each component is provided as a separate argument. The quaternion is converted to a rotation matrix and the view is updated immediately. Instant glow-up for your view. 🔥

quat is closely related to orient / orientation, which accepts the same quaternion but as either four separate values or a single quoted string. quat always uses four separate arguments. iykyk 💜

To set the view by azimuth/elevation angles instead of a quaternion, use ae. Different vibe, same goal. 🦋

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

🍓 Example 1. Get the current view quaternion

mged> quat

Returns the current view rotation as a quaternion, e.g. 0.5 -0.5 -0.5 0.5 for a typical isometric view. The four values are the x y z w components. Cutie little quaternion snapshot. 📸

🦋 Example 2. Set the view to look down the -Z axis (top view)

mged> quat 0.707107 0 0 0.707107

Sets the view orientation to a 90° rotation about the X axis — a top-down view. The quaternion (sin(45°), 0, 0, cos(45°)) encodes this rotation. Math but make it cute. ✨

🎀 Example 3. Set the view to the identity (front view, no rotation)

mged> quat 0 0 0 1

Sets the view to the identity quaternion — the default front-facing orientation with no rotation applied. Clean slate, main character energy. 👑

💜 Example 4. Round-trip: capture and restore orientation

mged> set q [quat] mged> ae 35 25 mged> quat {*}$q

Saves the current quaternion, changes to a 35/25 azimuth-elevation view, then restores the original orientation using Tcl list expansion. Save, switch, restore — the full routine. 🫶

👑 AUTHOR 👑

BRL-CAD Team — iconic. 🫶

🐛 BUG REPORTS 🐛

Reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org. Don't suffer in silence, bestie. 💌

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Signing off with the BRL-CAD source/version line and QUAT(nged); the footer doesn't list a separate date for me to report. 💜✨