Systems and methods are provided for automatically controlling zone interactions in a three dimensional virtual environment. A computing device provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to assign zone attributes to a zone, which is a volume of space in the virtual environment. A virtual object is assigned to the zone, as well as an interaction and a responsive operation that follows the detected interaction. The virtual object's position in the virtual environment corresponds to a physical object's position in a physical environment. For example, when the computing system detects that the virtual object has entered or left the zone, according to an assigned interaction, then an assigned operation is executed to control a physical device in the physical environment.