Counterintuitive rotate view

[yoshimitsuspeed]

I don't remember always having this issue. I almost feel like the rotate/orbit has changed at some point recently. Or maybe it just started to bother me more recently. Any way you cut it I have been having trouble getting objects to orient properly when I need a specific view.
To make sure I wasn't just tripping I just opened up Freecad and Inventor and freecad did exactly what I expected it to. You grab the screen on the left side of the screen vertically centered and rotate the part and it spins on the Z axis. Grab the top left and drag diagnally to the bottom left and it rotates predictable on two axis. Grab the top left and drag right and it clocks the part.

In F360 grabbing in the center left rotates the part on the z axis but when I grab the top right and drag left it does the exact same thing making the control capability much less in f360. If I try to rotate the part as I do in the first freecad video instead of just rotating it along the parts long axis as it did in freecad it rotates in what appears to me to be a completely arbitrary manner. I have spent literally like 10 min trying to position a view exactly where I need it in situations like this.

Well nevermind on the videos.
It says I can't upload WMV videos?

[innovatenate]

Is it just with one particular design? Is it a design with a body or component way off "in-space," (far from the origin)?

There are a lot of workspace navigation behavior preferences located in the general panel of the preferences dialog.You may consider testing to see if the behavior improves.

• Disable the "Enable camera pivot"
• Modify the "Default Orbit type"?
• Change "Pan,Zoom,Orbit shortcuts" to Inventor?

Could you make a recording with Autodesk Screencast and share a link instead of a file? Or upload the WMV to a file sharing site like Autodesk 360 and create a public sharing link. 

I hope that helps.

Thanks,

[yoshimitsuspeed]

I really thought we could upload videos here so I just used my prefered recorder. For some reason it rather bothers me that screencasts are just uploaded under community. I assume they aren't publicaly visible without a shared link but it still makes me uneasy thinking of them being public. Not so much these videos in particular but just in general.

I tried your suggestions and it didn't make any difference. Here are the examples.

Here is freecad.
Now you can see when I grab the screen in the middle left and drag horizontally the behaviour is different than if I grab at the top left and drag horizontal. If I grab in the top center and drag vertically the motion will be different than when I grab the top left and drag vertically.
Next I position the flange at a diagnol and try to lay it down more on it's face. By grabing in the right spot it rotates easily on the desired axis.
Next note how easy it is to square the part back up at the end. I know this isn't necessary in F360 as you can just select square views but notice how much dexterity I have in moving it exactly how I want by grabbing a different area of the  screen and that changing the motion on the part.
And lastly look at how consistent a corner to corner drag is giving a very predictable rotation and putting it back where it started when I return.
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/1006d75f-4c71-45a6-b0d4-61f4db6b288c

Now F360.

Whether I grab the left center of the screen or the left top of the screen and drag horizontally the effect is essentially the same although at the top it definitely seems a little unstable and jittery. If I grab the far left upper corner and drag down the effect is the same as if I grabbed it in the center and dragged down.
The diagnol drag is the one place where the mouses location on the screen seems to have some effect but not in a desireable way. As the mouse gets closer to the center the motion becomes very unstable and unpredictable. Because of this when I drag the mouse back to the same point on the screen the part is in a different position. That is not an issue in it's self but it shows how unstable it seems to be.
The next part is the issue that I have had on a regular basis. This happens all the time when I am trying to get the perfect angle for a render but even sometimes when I am trying to get the part so I can see into a tight corner or hard to see spot i can bat around at the model for ages and never find the right way to get it where I want it.
Getting it to the diagnal position is easy enough but from there I want to tip the face downward just as I did in freecad. I could have done this much better in freecad if I were in practice but I got it decent pretty quick. In f360 however there is no motion to make this happen.

It's like if Freecad uses your hands to position the part F360 uses a pool noodle duct taped to a baseball bat to position the part.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/1d34e945-0ba3-4e8b-b8fd-7d41a835240a

[haughec]

You're a Free Orbit guy in a Constrained Orbit world. 🙂  The good news is that Fusion supports both.  Try switching to Free Orbit (from Preferences as Nate suggests above, or from the Orbit drop-down in the Nav bar).  This should provide Orbit behavior similar to that of Freecad.

Thanks for the screencast videos.  

Charles

[yoshimitsuspeed]

I tried the free orbit last night and didn't notice any difference. I tried it again today and notice maybe a little difference?

It still feels much more cumbersom than freecad and still has similar issues shown in the videos with maybe just a little more control or dexterity or whatever I should call it.

[innovatenate]

The screencast utility provides several different options. You can choose to make a video public, availabel by direct link only, or to keep it private (only visible to you when logged in with your Autodesk ID). You can edit a video on the Screencast website to change the status at anytime.

,One suggestion for the orbit issue, may be to test using the orbit command on the navigation bar at the bottom of the workspace. 

It can help to limit to one axis of rotation at a time for a more precise orbit. Below is an old screencast that demos the command.

I hope that helps.

[yoshimitsuspeed]

So after playing with free orbit for a couple days I can say it's definitely much better but I think I'm goingo to go so far as to call this a bug. It is frikken impossible to get it to rotate how I want and the orbit selector actually seems to demonstrate that F360 does not recognize or accept rotation in this direction. Unfortunately it's exactly the angle I want a lot of my renders at.
Here is another freecad example. One quick movement and the flange can be rotated downward.

Now I am also using a trial of NX so I tried in that. I am actually more impressed with orbit in freecad than NX at the moment but maybe I just need to get used to it more or maybe I am missing a constrained orbit option similar to F360. With that said with just clicking and dragging I was able to position it relatively close to where I wanted it pretty quickly.
But then I found all I had to do was grab a line to pivot it on that axis which allowed me to do exactly what I wanted very quickly.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/afc5e7c6-4125-4bb4-9bfc-3bbff928a168

Next I try to do the same in F360
Using the orbit tool there is nothing that I can see that allows me to rotate on the axis I want.
Then when I escape the orbit tool and try to free rotate you can see where it will not allow me to get it at the double diagnal. I can look at it square on and tilt it toward me at a 45 but then if I try to spin it around it will rotate the part either completely vertical or completely horizontal.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/c0232f40-9b10-4fa4-9395-3ddf3521f2b8

[kb9ydn]

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@yoshimitsuspeed wrote:

So after playing with free orbit for a couple days I can say it's definitely much better but I think I'm goingo to go so far as to call this a bug. It is frikken impossible to get it to rotate how I want and the orbit selector actually seems to demonstrate that F360 does not recognize or accept rotation in this direction. Unfortunately it's exactly the angle I want a lot of my renders at.
Here is another freecad example. One quick movement and the flange can be rotated downward.

Now I am also using a trial of NX so I tried in that. I am actually more impressed with orbit in freecad than NX at the moment but maybe I just need to get used to it more or maybe I am missing a constrained orbit option similar to F360. With that said with just clicking and dragging I was able to position it relatively close to where I wanted it pretty quickly.
But then I found all I had to do was grab a line to pivot it on that axis which allowed me to do exactly what I wanted very quickly.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/afc5e7c6-4125-4bb4-9bfc-3bbff928a168

Next I try to do the same in F360
Using the orbit tool there is nothing that I can see that allows me to rotate on the axis I want.
Then when I escape the orbit tool and try to free rotate you can see where it will not allow me to get it at the double diagnal. I can look at it square on and tilt it toward me at a 45 but then if I try to spin it around it will rotate the part either completely vertical or completely horizontal.

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/community/screencast/c0232f40-9b10-4fa4-9395-3ddf3521f2b8

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Yeah, I think what you're looking for is a rotate around selected entity (like you show in NX) and not really a full orbit.  SWX also has a way to do that but Fusion appears to not.  I kind of thought it did but I can't seem to find it now.

Free orbit will get you where you want to go but not in the most direct way.  You sort of have to roll the model around until it's in the orientation you want.  This is fine for general modelling and after you've used free orbit for awhile it becomes second nature and you can do it pretty quickly.  But it is more difficult to orient the model in a precise way with free orbit.  Which is why there should be the ability to rotate around a selected entity, like an edge or axis.

If Fusion doesn't have this it would definitely be a good candidate for the ideastation (and IMO it should already be on the list of things to add).

C|

[yoshimitsuspeed]

I am going to partially disagree with you because if you watch the video on freecad it allows this movement in one quick motion wheras in F360 it is practically impossible. I do believe there is something wrong or at least severly lacking with the way F360 translates mouse inputs to movement of the part. If you watch all the videos I posted or if you play with freecad you will notice that the amount of control is much greater and much more predictable.

[TrippyLighting]

The orbit behavior was changed just recently to be more similar in feel/function to Solid Works which definitely improved it.

Personally I've never experienced the past orbit behavior as bad.

I've made a wise decision a long time ago to spend a mere $100 on a 3D Connexion Space navigator and that solves the problem once and forever. My 2 cents!

[yoshimitsuspeed]

I definitely thought I noticed it get worse at some point in the last few months but as I just pointed out in another thread it may be that an update or other issue reset it from free to constrained orbit. This happened again this morning when I opened up F360. I noticed orbit did not feel as good so I opened up the prefrences and sure enough it was back to constrained.
I don't really remember how Solidworks behaved and since it was the software I learned on I wouldn't have had anything to compare it to but I hate to say it out of all the CAD programs I have used recently including NX I really feel like freecad has the best orbit control lol.

[kb9ydn]

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@yoshimitsuspeed wrote:

I am going to partially disagree with you because if you watch the video on freecad it allows this movement in one quick motion wheras in F360 it is practically impossible. I do believe there is something wrong or at least severly lacking with the way F360 translates mouse inputs to movement of the part. If you watch all the videos I posted or if you play with freecad you will notice that the amount of control is much greater and much more predictable.

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I tried FreeCAD before I posted and I didn't like it's orbit behavior at all.  It actually reminded me a little bit of the free CAD file viewer from Dassault called eDrawings, which I also really despise.

But people all have their own preferences so it makes sense to be able to have different options available.

C|

[mcramblet]

@TrippyLighting

Amen to the 3D Connexion Space navigator. I recently purchased one because I couldn't keep straight all of the mouse and keyboard combinations to navigate between Fusion 360, Rhino, Evolve, Keyshot, etc., now they all navigate the exact same way! So much better.

[innovatenate]

I made one more Autodesk Screencast about the pivot point and the constrained orbit command that may help. 

Thanks,

[evandodani]

dude this worked for me