The Q Menu

Okay so here is the Q menu. I will refer to this as the Q menu because of the fact of the default button to pull up this menu is Q. So anyway, you will see a bunch of props you can spawn with their icons. Simply aim, open up the menu, and click on a icon of a prop to spawn it where you aimed in the game. Above the icons you will notice names of props and such, click different names to pull up different spawn-lists (the icons of the props you can spawn). To the right of all this is the location of all your tools. To select one just simply click on it and the tool gun will become the tool you selected. Even further to the right are the properties of the tool you have selected. Individual terms of each tool will be listed under each tool's post. Getting along, you will see a tab at the top of the menu, located next to props called browse. This is another way to browse for spawn-lists but in file format like shown below:

I do not recommend the use of this very much because it is annoying to navigate and will take sometime to load. Although this method does allow the searching of some props, that are not listed in the spawn-lists in the prop tab. Okay then, onto the next tab, being NPC's. NPC stands for non-player character, like in half-life 2 the residents of the apartments and city that talk and interact with you along with other games like Mass Effect (party members), Halo (other marines), it just goes on and on. You will see a menu like this:

Again I will have more NPC options than you due to mods that I have gotten from garrysmod.org. Disregarding that, you will see portraits along with names of different NPC's. If you click one of the portraits, it will spawn an NPC where you were aiming before you opened up the Q menu just like a prop would spawn. Now look down below the portraits, you will find a drop down menu and check boxes, let me explain what each one does. 

• Disable AI - AI stands for Artificial-Intelligence, so disabling this will stop the NPC from reacting to you in anyway, it will not react to it's environment or anything.
• Keep Corpses - This will keep the corpse of the NPC if it is killed, normally left unchecked, the NPC will disappear few seconds after dying. Leaving this unchecked is a good option to reduce strain on your graphics processor.
• Allow Join Player's Squad - For those who haven't played half-life 2, NPC's like Rebel NPCs can join the player's squad and fight for the character, along with the medic can heal the character. The squad can hold up to five people, and only certain NPCs will work.
• NPC Weapon - This is a drop down menu of the possible weapons the NPC can spawn with. Be warned, certain NPCs like combine will recognize the player as an enemy and attempt to kill you with any weapon it is given.

After playing around with this fun menu for a bit, move onto the weapons tab up on top. The weapons tab will look something like this: 

Okay, okay, as you can guess like everything else, I DO HAVE MODS. This includes the non-CSS weapons you see on the page. And to make this clear someone did make a nuke mod, and Ironman, just to cover that. You honostly do not need to know much about this page and it should be pretty self-explanitory. Click on the picture of one of the weapons and it will be added to your weapons and be pulled out when you add it unless you already have it in your inventory. To change weapons I have already explained but either use the mouse wheel or click 1-6 on the keyboard, and sometimes weapons will pile up on one number so to access those weapons click the number a certain multitude of times. Also incase you haven't noticed yet, the text you see about each group of weapons like "Other" and "Counter Strike" are groupings. Click those gray texts and it will close or open the group, this applies to NPCs, tools, and more. Now move onto the Vehicles tab, it should look like this, again minus the addons i have: 

This tab acts the same way the weapons tab does, but as you can guess it spawns a vehicle insted. To go into a vehicles you look at the seat and press "E" or whatever you have assigned the action button in your keyboard mapping in the options menu. There are some seats in the vehicles menu, now these are stationary, they will not move. They are used for custom vehicles. Like if you build a vehicle out of props and the wheel tool or thruster tool then you can weld a seat on your vehicle to be attatched to the vehicle you just created. Anyway that's about all you need to know about vehicles, we will get more in depth with vehicles with Vehicle control, easy engine, and pod controller later, much much later. There is a lot to cover. The next and final tab is the entity tab. Aren't you glad this section is almost over. *sigh* Almost to the building part after I get the entity tab explained and then tools. Then we start creating stuff. You're gonna like the first project, if your into funny stuff. Aside from the mini rant I went on, move on to the Entity tab: 

You will probably see a couple entities when you first start off including bouncy ball and maybe a few others, I'm not sure what the updates gave you as far as entities without addons. Anyway, they work the same way as a vehicle does, you spawn one by clicking the picture. You will have to learn what each entity you get does on your own because each entity has a custom script (script is a notepad document of coding with a .lua ending in your gmod directory for entities). Anyway that raps up the Q menu. Now move on to "Using the tools".