Orbit Point Of Interest - Use World Grid

[dswahn]

Orbiting using the Orbit Point Of Interest mode is useful as long as you initiate the orbit over a geometry object.

If you don't initiate the orbit over a geometry object you would expect the center of the orbit (the "point of interest") to be placed on the World Grid (or Active Grid Object), however the center of orbit ends up in a seemingly arbitrary position above or below the World Grid, which produces unexpected and annoying scene navigation.

Highly annoying

If the center of orbit would be placed on the World Grid when no geometry is in front of the cursor I believe the orbiting would become more intuitive and less confusing and annoying. At least make this a user option in preferences.

Also, the center of orbit does not detect frozen objects, which is annoying in case you actually want to use frozen object surfaces to orbit around. This should also be made as an option depending on user preference.

(Edit:)

To summarize other suggestions:

The user should be able to decide a dynamic orbiting mode that switches depending on what the user specifies for different selection levels, for example:

• If no object is selected .
• If any object is selected but subObjectLevel is equal to 0.
• If subObjectLevel is not 0 (when editing vertices, faces, etc) but no subObject is selected.

• If subObjects are selected.

Other suggestions include:

• Locking the Point Of Interest (the point won't change until you unlock it).

• Manual Placement of the Point Of Interest by clicking/snapping to things in the scene.

[Kranos_Orphydian]

good point here

[dswahn]

I also propose a hybrid center-of-orbit system dependent on selection, preferably where the user can set what kind of orbit mode should be used for different situations:

• If no object is selected .
• If any object is selected but subObjectLevel is equal to 0.
• If subObjectLevel is not 0 (when editing vertices, faces, etc) but no subObject is selected.

• If subObjects are selected.

This setup could provide a flexible way for users to customize their own preferred navigation behavior.
Perhaps even the initial proposition of having the orbit try and position itself on the construction grid could be an option, if some users prefer the current navigation mode.

[teratron]

Good idea! Would be cool to have a way to "lock the orbit point to current" as well.

[hello6CCKU]

I would rather have it so that if you click outside of an object / not on a surface it would orbit around the last point used. 

It's really really annoying when we're accidentally clicking outside of the object instead of on the surface of the object and suddenöy the orbit point is somewhere completely different. Especially when working on thin or narrow models, we really have to pay attention to where we have our mouse pointer before rotating. 

Using the "last used surface point" would greatly reduce that annoyance. 

[Kranos_Orphydian]

@dswahn  pls update your original post with your latest ideas since now this forum allow to do that 🙂

[dswahn]

Post has been updated @Kranos_Orphydian .

[albert.akessonGGLGA]

Great idea @dswahn — this is a feature totally worthy to look into!
Hopefully the Autodesk Team will do something about it.