Hi Mike, so there is actually a complication with that which involves the perspective view.

When the perspective view pans, it actually changes what would have been displayed in the now off-screen portion of the selection box. So it makes it kind of awkward to do things that try to work with screen space like selection boxes while allowing panning in perspective.

The auto pan that does currently work is only focused on changing the view and not on simultaneously trying to track some containment in screen coordinates at the same time, so that's why that one is feasible.

Perspective views have this kind of weird non-linear behavior that can complicate some kinds of things like that, like a small movement of perspective view panning can move some things on the screen much more than others - things that are close to your eye point will whiz by and things that are far away move only a small amount on the screen.


re: while holding objects, you mean doing an auto pan for dragging objects? There is a different complication with that, which is that it's currently possible to work in split view and grab an object in the Top view where you can get it more easily but then actually move your mouse over to the Front view and thus move it upwards in elevation. The thing that makes that possible is being able to continue the drag in a different viewport - if dragging did not ever let you leave the viewport you started in and instead panned the view it would then eliminate that function.

- Michael