I would like to eventually add the ability to switch the 3D view betwen perspective and ortho projections, right now it is fixed to be perspective.

At that point, it sounds like the 3D view would do what you want, except for being constrained to only rotate around the vertical axis.

What benefits do you see for restricting the rotation instead of allowing for free rotates?

You can set up the arrow keys to rotate in a particular direction now if you like, use these shortcut keys:

Key	Command
LeftArrow	script:moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D').rotate( 'left', 6.0 );
RightArrow	script:moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D').rotate( 'right', 6.0 );
UpArrow	script:moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D').rotate( 'up', 6.0 );
DownArrow	script:moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D').rotate( 'down', 6.0 );

- Michael