Orbit

[Anonymous]

Hi!

I'm using inventor 2016.

I've been googling for about two hours now and I've not found a solution to a simple question:

How do I convince Inventor to orbit properly? Whenever I use orbit, I have to zoom in and out and fiddle with the orbit until I get where I want. I am sick to my teeth for Inventor assuming that I want to orbit the entire assembly even if it means that it orbits right off my screen while all I want is to actually orbit around a face to see the face connected to it. It is quite frustrating and counter productive to have to fiddle long seconds in order to find the right face for an assembly constrain and then have to fiddle again until I get back to the second face for my constrain.

I am currently using free orbit. I tried using a constrained orbit but that also has very limited applicability as it prevents me to orbit properly around the object. True, the object no longer orbits out of view, but it's still useless.

It would be very logical to tie the pivot point to the mouse cursor, wouldn't it? If the cursor is on a face, then the model is orbited around that face; to me that's proper orbit.

The point is this: imagine you have a cube in your hand and you want to see the back face, you simply turn the front face away until you get to the back face. You don't begin rotating your arms around in three directions to simply spin the **** thing around. You don't pin the cube to one finger and then move the wrist and the arm to accomplish something as simple as a a spin. You don't use a center of gravity. You don't pick a vertex or an edge, you simply look and spin?

Thankyou

[brandon.rodriguezN68U2]

Thanks, I think is an improvement. It seems like I have to left click a part or first to define the spin center and then it rotates about that point?

[johnsonshiue]

Hi Brandon,

The center definition is optional (implicit). But, to lock to certain point on a model, you will need to click somewhere.

Many thanks!

[Melanie.Blacklock]

I had a similar frustration in Revit.  Started laughing when I did what you posted...thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hello Johnson,

I don't agree that this change is very difficult/expensive/not cost effective.  The function to move the pivot point to under the mouse pointer already exists.  You evoke the navigation wheel, move the mouse such that the orbit tool is highlighted, hold down the control key, and left click.  Moves the pivot point exactly as desired.  The request is not for a new navigation function, but to allow this existing function to be accessible by minimal user input rather than requiring evoking the navigation wheel and performing a number of other mouse movements and clicks.  This could be achieved by making this "pivot change function" accessible as a keyboard shortcut.  There is actually already a "Set Pivot Point" function in the list of commands, but in my testing, this function suffers from two deficiencies: it recenters the model to the pivot point which is undesirable and it is buggy and unreliable when evoked while performing any of the feature creation functions.  Evoking from the navigation wheel does not recenter and seems to be much more resilient to whatever feature creation functions happens to be on screen at the time.  The function is there, it exists, please explain to me what is so difficult about making an existing function more accessible to the user.  Maybe it is just a matter of a very slight bug-fix and improvement (able to switch off recentering) of the existing "Set Pivot Point" command, which sounds very doable.  

[mmcmanigal]

I totally agree. I would really like orbit to properly setup where the orbit is automatically done like other cad programs and life. I'd like the mouse cursor to be the orbit point automatically so we don't have to zoom in and out or click on and off the orbit button.

[prhoads3W8KL]

They tried to implement this in Inv 2023, it does work but has a limitation that it only auto-sets the pivot point when you are zoomed in to a certain level, I think the center point of the model has to be off screen.  It means for those extreme cases where you are zoomed way in to a tiny detail, it works, but if you are zoomed in only moderately, it is still janky and somewhat difficult to control.  This is not my preference, I would prefer to just always set the pivot point. The other annoying part is that it always shows this green ball while orbiting, to indicate where the pivot point is, I would prefer that green ball be hidden.  Also, in classic autodesk form, no options are provided to the user to set how zoomed in you have to be for auto-set to work or to hide the green ball.  But I suppose this is progress.

[nbonnett-murphy]

Coming from a different cad program to inventor, this still feels very bad in 2023. I'd encourage inventor devs to grab a license of a competitors product and give it a shot to see how much better it feels 😉.

You just rotate. There's no view cube, no set of 5 or 6 different pan/rotate/zoom tools, no steering wheel to mess with. Just hold the middle button down and the model spins around your mouse. Or twist a spacemouse cap and the thing spins around center of the screen. That's it.

I know that every CAD program has different workflows and you always have to relearn things when switching. But I've never encountered any other 3d program that takes such an odd approach to such an important function. My very first impression of inventor on day 1 was "how did autodesk get left so far in the past on 3d navigation?". I've been using inventor for 6 months and I've learned a lot of things, but I'm still left wondering:

How did autodesk get left so far behind on 3d navigation?

[Frederick_Law]

Got a 3D mouse and don't worry about it 😋

Just did some test on middle button orbit.

If nothing is selected, assembly/part center is orbit.

If that center is outside the screen and cursor on some part, IV "project" cursor point on the face and use that as center.

If cursor not on any part, IV project cursor to closest feature for center.

User can select a part and use that center for orbit.

Change selection filter and user can pick: plane, line, edge as center.

[JDMather]

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@nbonnett-murphy wrote:

Just hold the middle button down and the model spins around your mouse.

Or twist a spacemouse cap and the thing spins around center of the screen. That's it.

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Shift + wheel in Inventor.

What problem are you having using 3DConnexion device.

[Frederick_Law]

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@JDMather wrote:Shift + wheel in Inventor.

Default setting but we can change it.

I do miss the middle button orbit.