fix 3D navigation

[roambotics_scott]

3D navigating around a design is not quite as important as stability (which, kudos, F360 team - seems to be very servicable now), but it's something that anyone doing a nontrivial design will have to use and deal with.

A bunch of people have complained about this in one way or another, but 3D navigation around a model is almost unusably bad and actually seems to be getting worse with every release.

Opening a design and orbiting is usable [possibly adding an example to the comments if I can find a workable way to do that; FYI / bug report - highlighting and double clicking on text in the editor scrolled me to the bottom of the page moving the text area out of view; actually even single clicking and trying to highlight text to make it bold scrolled me to the bottom of the page]

Once you zoom into a detail on the design [zoom into visible text extrusion], things quickly become utterly unusable [at least with a MacBook Pro / trackpad].

After zooming in to here

scrolling / panning around took [no exaggeration] 17 reps of sliding two fingers from the very top of the trackpad to the very bottom.

Weirder still, if I pinch to zoom out 

it still takes a half dozen steps to get to the top.

The only way to recover that is to hit «home» in the view cube.

This is just a simple example of how basic 3D navigation around a design is borked to the point where it's practically unusable. When you actually need to manage fine details [say for example in each corner], it's a nightmare [especially given that there is no way to add intrinsic symmetry to a model like this which should have two mirror planes of symmetry built in; having to deal with that manually is also an error-prone accounting nightmare]

[FYI / bug report pinch to zoom and two fingers to pan works briefly then two fingers to pan starts zooming and panning stops working entirely until the window is minimized and restored]

[FYI / bug report: created a model and tried to share a public link but there was no link and the privacy settings are both unclickable; also I get that it's meant to be a slider / switch, but that box by the ckeck looks checkable and is bad UI]

[roambotics_scott]

Hopefully this will work

https://s3.amazonaws.com/roambotics_general/Navigation+Sucks+v3.f3d

[roambotics_scott]

Not to be a jerk but how can this have 17 views and not a single upvote ?

It costs you nothing and takes maybe 200ms to click the upvote button and this (and many other things in Ideastation) are complete no-brainers.

Even if you have something against me personally, please be a little bit more liberal with those up-votes, in general

[kb9ydn]

While I'm not masochistic enough to use a track pad, I do have one on my laptop.  I just pray I'll never have to use it.

But as you have discovered, the orbit function is quite bad when you have to work zoomed in closely to a large model (regardless of what type of input device you use).  You can manually set the pivot point (unless you're using the Solidworks key bindings), which sort of helps, but that becomes quite tedious if you have to do much navigating around a model.

C|

[roambotics_scott]

It's easy enough to blame the trackpad but it's a very intuitive interface and 3D navigation with it is totally doable (just not in F360 🙂

[Anonymous]

I found that Apple has missed the boat with the Maker movement. The built in MacBook trackpad, the new Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse 2 have done nothing to make it easier to use 3D CAD software.

I'm sure there are some 3D touch features that could be added to Apple's Taptic engine, but you are better off getting a PC Mouse with 4 way scroll wheel support to plugin when you are doing CAD work.

If you want to go a step further Logitech has a CAD division featuring the 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator. I picked up the desktop version (the mobile version feels to light) and use it as a left hand mouse for changing 3D views with my right hand on my Microsoft mouse with 4 direction scroll wheel support and couldn't be happier with it on my MacBook running El Captian.

[roambotics_scott]

Nah.

Over a decade ago, I had a Space Ball and 3D Mouse and neither was particularly intuitive to people who came in for demos.

It's easy to make a great 3D Touch interface using any multitouch trackpad.

Two fingers to pan.

Pinch two fingers to move in / out.

Three finger drag to change the view direction.

Zero need for exotic devices or explicit support from Apple or Microsoft for that.

[Anonymous]

I hope you are right and that AutoDesk can unlock 3D navigation using Apple's hardware.

If you are saying you can use an Apple trackpad better than using a PC mouse please post the video. I'd like to learn your techniques!

For me it was easier to incorporate PC hardware into my Mac environment than to be continually frustrated.

Sent from my iPhone

[roambotics_scott]

3D mouse not PC mouse and using those is really something you have to experience first hand to get.

Trackpad vs mouse is subjective but I claim that if you've never touched either a trackpad is intrinsically more intuitive and that the difficulty most people have with them is more due to having to work against what they've learned from mousing

[TrippyLighting]

It has only 4 votes because most people are happy with it. Most people also don't use a trackpad, because, as you've already mentioned they are so used to a mouse.

I personally dislike working with trackpads for one reason. I've never owned a mac notebook, and never had a good chance to work with these large trackpads. The trackpads on all the of the Windows notebooks I had the displeasure to work with professionally  sucked!

Also, I have the smaled 3D connxion 3D mouse, connected to an iMac. so I am happy with the navigation.

Then Trackpad users that are unhappy, and this is not the first post that repors that neeing atention, would not know that this thread revolves around trackpads and that's not in the title 😉

Either way, I'ts got a vote from me, so Apples superior tackpads get the software support they deserve.

[roambotics_scott]

Personal taste about trackpads aside, I don't think this is a trackpad issue, I think the navigation is fundamentally broken and I suspect that the same issue would be present if I used a mouse (which I'll find a way to do ASAP just to confirm that to myself)

[kb9ydn]

Trackpad navigation may have its own problems, but I'm almost positive the major issue here is the same one I brought up a year ago about the orbit pivot point being not where you would expect.  If this is the case, it applies to whatever input device you use, mouse, trackpad, or 3D navigator.

C|

[roambotics_scott]

To me it feels like the camera isn't flying around but they're zooming in and then the camera is getting into a weird state that is hard to recover from.

It should be flying around and zooming a separate action

[roambotics_scott]

Actually the more I think about it, what's really needed is something where you're basically holding the assembly / body in your hands, rotating it around, bringing it closer and further from your eye and adding / removing magnification to examine details.

[kb9ydn]

"Actually the more I think about it, what's really needed is something where you're basically holding the assembly / body in your hands, rotating it around, bringing it closer and further from your eye and adding / removing magnification to examine details."

That is exactly how I started thinking about it when I started playing with a 3D mouse the other day.  Manipulating models in SWX feels very much like this.  Fusion sort of does when you're zoomed out, but when you zoom in close it looses it.

C|

[pravdomil]

Hello, try NativeTrackpad Addin I think that it will solve the issue.