Set Orbit Center & Model Views

[charlestauber]

I'm newish to Fusion 360, but not CAD systems. I find the orbiting functionality in Fusion difficult, to say the least. I'm working on a current Mac with up to date OS. The issues I'm having are as follows:

1. Regardless of zoom, I cannot have a model spin about a chosen point: it continues to orbit around Fusion's chosen point: setting the orbit centre doesn't seem to work. The right-click/Set Orbit Center doesn't accomplish anything, nor does shift+middle mouse button. 

2. At "random intervals", orbiting the model causes the model to zoom out to see the entire model. This is most annoying: if I had wanted to zoom out to see the entire model or spin about the centre of the model, I would have. Is there any way to prevent that behaviour?

3. Is there anyway, such as shortcuts to retrieve saved model views/orientations, rather than to select them from the Browser, which is cumbersome?

A search of the knowledge base provides many old answers to 1., above, but none seem to work and some are contradictory, as in "used to work, but doesn't now".

Thank you.

[jeff_strater]

regarding orbit center:   Shift-MMB works for me.  See the screencast below.  During view rotation using Shift-MMB, if you continue holding Shift, and just click (as opposed to drag) MMB, it will show a small green dot that becomes the new center of view rotation.  Note that you must be over part of the model to do this - the dot will get placed at that point on the model.  I agree that it can be a bit of a challenge to my dexterity to do this, but it does work (for me, at least)

regarding the "zoom all" behavior, my offhand guess is that this is accidental shift-MMB double click.  This action will do a zoom all.  If you're trying to set the view rotation center with shift-MMB click, and occasionally double click by mistake, this could explain that behavior.  Hard to say for sure, though.

The other frustration I've found, with one of the wireless mice I use, is that clicking the MMB mouse wheel without accidentally causing a roll of the mouse wheel to happen, can be difficult.  So, often, when I am trying to rotate the view, I will accidentally trigger a zoom (shift-MMB scroll), because, on that mouse it is hard to click without causing a roll.

no, unfortunately, there is no way to retrieve saved views other than from the browser, sorry.

Screencast will be displayed here after you click Post.

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[charlestauber]

Thanks, Jeff, for your reply. 

Over the past 30 years, I've used a variety of well-known CAD systems. There are a number of things about Fusion 360 that really make it unnecessarily cumbersome to use and that prevent it from being a "top-notch" system. Seemingly some of these behaviours could be easily "fixed", should developers want to. One of those is the human interaction with viewing of the model. Specifically, in easily naming and retrieving saved orientations of the model and in interactively re-orienting the model (i.e. spin and zoom). 

I've spent several hours, working with several different mouses and various configurations and settings, and am unable to find any way of changing the point about which the model spins. Using the "Solidworks" mouse preference option, the shift + middle mouse button gives zoom, at least on one of my mice. Even when the green dot appears to specify a centre of rotation, selecting a point on the model doesn't alter the default centre of rotation: it still uses Fusion's choice of spin centre. The ability to do this should be simple and not require acts of dexterity, since it is something that one does repeatedly during modelling sessions.

In changing to a different mouse, it does appear that, on that mouse, clicking the middle mouse button, for whatever reason invokes fitting the model to the screen (zooming out). I appears you are correct that it is a difficulty in distinguishing between a middle mouse button click and a scroll. Thank you. 

It would greatly facilitate manipulating the view of a model if one could retrieve saved views using keyboard shortcuts assigned to specific saved, named views. Even having a pop-up window from which to select a saved, named view would be an improvement over having to find the view in the Browser. 

Anyway, thank you for your help and response.

Charles

p.s. I don't see the Screencast to which you referred. 

[ddbacker]

I agree with charles tauber: so much problems with such a  (at least for us, users) simple manipulation as changing the orbit point...

shift + MMB does not work with me and also RMB and then chosing 'set orbit point' in the popup menu does not work (I see the green dot, but when i move it nothing happens afterwards: the orbit point did not move tot the new position), what works more or less is choose for the menu option "constrained orbit" and move the body in the direction of an appearing circle with the orbit point as the centre.. so I move the body to the orbit centre

but it should be the opposite round... such a frustrating waste of time for such a basic action.

[The-real-GreggT]

The original post is from 2017 and nothing really has changed; it's still too hard to rotate the model reliably and to retrieve views.  I propose that AutoDesk survey the CAD market and implement a few different ways to use the mouse, controlled by a robust Preferences, that would bring them up to the standards we expect.  All the nice features in the world don't compensate me for the number of frustrating times I (and others) say "oh, wait, that model is going the wrong way", or "It's just the way Fusion works.  Hold on, I'll figure it out..."

[charlestauber]

What has changed, from my perspective, is as follows:

1. less and less of Fusion 360's functionality is available for free

2. The price of a subscription for Fusion 360 has gone up considerably to the point that it starts to rival the price of "professional" software

3. I switched to using a different software (Onshape) that has a user experience that I prefer for modelling. 

Carry on...