@ Marc
you can see that the Michael animation is some like my method :D
After some training the New Axis function is some "performante" :)

Thanks Michael, I did not understand that to grab the manipulator by the axis rotate it, I was dragging the endpoints...

It's the first time I feel I should've read the instructions!

I get better results with Pilou's technique now...

Marc

Hi Marc,

> Thanks Michael, I did not understand that to grab the
> manipulator by the axis rotate it, I was dragging the
> endpoints...

It should actually give you the same result if you dragged by the endpoints - for this particular thing it works the same if you grab anywhere on the axis, including the end.

The part that gets a bit more complex though is the behavior of the "primary axis" - the one that is marked with the outline dot at the end. When you drag one of the other axis lines, the primary axis will remain unchanged and the other ones will only pivot around it.

If you drag on the primary axis, it has more free unconstrained rotation.

You can switch the primary axis by clicking on an axis instead of dragging on it.


When you initially place the widget, the z axis will start out as the primary axis.


- Michael

Hi Michael,

Yes, I understood the primary axis feature constrain in your first description.
Thanks for taking the time to point out that dragging on the end or middle does not matter.

Perhaps something like a quarter circle representing the axis rotation would be educational for people who are a bit challenged like me?

Maybe colors for the axis?
Just a thought...






Marc

Hi Marc,

> Perhaps something like a quarter circle representing the axis
> rotation would be educational for people who are a bit
> challenged like me?
>
> Maybe colors for the axis?
> Just a thought...

I could experiment with those in the future.

I rather like to keep things as much on the simple side as possible though, too many additional adornments and colors on the screen in general can sometimes cause different problems like distraction, or sometimes confusion about what the special meaning of the various colors are.

There's also a kind of general problem with axis colors that I've run into in the past, which is when the local grid axes of each viewport are colored with red for horizontal, and green for vertical, it tends to lead to confusion about why the front view for example has a green line when it is actually pointing up in the world z axis direction. That's another reason why I have tended to stay away from axis colors.

I may be able to kind of relax this avoidance in the future because it seems that I've been successful with moving way from the "local cplane in each viewport" model that I set up in Rhino to a more "global cplane" type system in MoI.

- Michael