Orbit - How does it really work?

[Anonymous]

Have been using F360 for awhile but Orbit is still mysterious to me and not really documented. There appear to be two completely independent modes:

1) Hold shift key and press the middle mouse button. (Optionally shift-middle click first to select a rotation point.) Now drag in any direction to orbit. Can move freely in any direction. As far as I can tell it makes no difference whether the orbit icon at the bottom of the screen shows "Free Orbit" or "Constrained Orbit". By the way, I am using the "Fusion 360" setting for Orbit; I would prefer to use the "Solidworks" setting but then there seems to be no way to select a rotation point.

2) Left click on the orbit icon at the bottom of the screen. A faint circle with "cross hairs" appears. Now drag using the left mouse button to orbit. Dragging on the individual cross hairs gives constrained rotation on horizontal or vertical axes. Clicking on cross hairs shifts the view in the direction opposite the cross hair location. (Why? It is easy to do this by mistake.) Dragging on the circle pivots along the viewing axis. Dragging anywhere else seems to work like the first Orbit mode, except it uses left button instead of shift-middle button. Oddly, a middle click exits this mode. (Again, why?) And again, it seems to make no difference whether the icon shows Free or Constrained. Also odd and buggy is that my web browser does not work properly when this mode is active in F360.

I do not see this two-mode behavior explained anywhere. Am I missing something? It kind of seems like two legacy behaviors (from Autocad? Inventor?) that don't really go together. Is there some real difference between Free and Constrained? Is there any way to select a rotation point with the "Solidworks" orbit setting? I considered making a screencast but it is very hard to show something that does not happen! Are there any screencasts showing the difference between Free and Constrained Orbit? I found some discussion but the answers either don't match what I see or are not really informative.

None of this keeps F360 from working but it is annoying to have a very basic tool that seems both flakey and under-documented. Any constructive feedback greatly appreciated.

[Mike.Grau]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thank you for raising our attention to that.

Yes, I do agree, we do have rarely a detailed information about constrained orbit and free orbit.

What I could find so far is a reference to this function in Inventor 2014 which is pretty much the same feature as in Fusion 360 with the link here.

I will reach out to our Learning Content Team and make sure we will add more information which will help the users.

Thank you,

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply to my question. I looked at the doc for Inventor 2015. Hard to tell if it really works exactly the same way.

As far as I can tell there is actually a bug here. There are icons for free and constrained orbit but they seem to have nothing to do with the actual behavior. Again there seem to be two independent modes:

Mode 1: Hold down SHIFT key and drag MIDDLE mouse button to orbit. Always gives unconstrained orbit. Allows a pivot point to be selected.

Mode 2: LEFT click on EITHER orbit icon at bottom of screen to start. Circle and cross hairs appear. Then drag with LEFT mouse button to orbit. Orbit is unconstrained if cursor is off circle and cross hairs; constrained if cursor is on them. Pivot point CANNOT be selected. Exit mode by clicking MIDDLE mouse button so cannot pan while in this mode.

All this is workable after a fashion but has semi-functioning icons and inconsistent use of mouse buttons. Based on the partial documentation I think it should be working as follows:

a) Use normal left click to select either constrained or free orbit icons.

b) Orbit is always done with SHIFT-MIDDLE mouse & drag. Should never use LEFT mouse button.

c) Circle and cross hairs appear and are available whenever constrained orbit is selected, but not when free orbit is selected

Please let me know if this is considered a bug or just a lack of documentation. Will them mark as solved.

Thanks!

[Mike.Grau · Accepted solution]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thank you for the update.

Yes, it is a lack of documentation. The features work as suposed but I do see space for improvement.

I have tested this for over an hour on a simple cube together with an Inventor specialist.

We used the latest build of Fusion 360 and Inventor 2017 and we both agreed the documentation needs to be improved.
I have already talked to our Learning Content Team and shared the link to this thread as well 🙂

I hope this information helps.

Thanks,

[bruce_rodenborn]

Small comment about the "circle" mentioned in your post for other readers. It is a VERY faint circle with lines emanating from it when the  constrained orbit is selected. It could be my screen, but

1. why is it so faint?

and most importantly,

2. why allow free obit when constrained orbit is selected.

With great power comes great irritation.