Hi Michael ..

When in 3D viewing mode I sometimes have problems with a 3D view being too small to select a face (for extruding) and when I click the zoom wheel just once it bounces to a large and moved view so that I cannot see the object any longer.

It works fine in front and side views so by changing the viewport I can work around the problem ... I tried to change the zoom settings in MoI but to no avail. The mouse settings don't seem to allow for this either.

Any suggestions?

cheers,
eric

Hi eric, the 3D view when it's set to have a perspective projection has pretty different zoom behavior than the front and side directions - instead of changing a zoom scale factor the persepctive view has to make things bigger by moving the camera point towards the target point. Then in addition to that the mouse wheel is not really a continuous thing, it goes in steps. So yeah it's easy for one mouse wheel zoom step to go past a nearby point of interest.

Some things you can do:

If one step of the mouse wheel goes too far, step it backwards again and instead use the zoom button at the bottom of the viewport here:


The way you use that is by a press and drag - press the mouse button down on that button and while still holding it down move your mouse up or down a small amount. If you only move the mouse a small distance it will make for less of a zoom step than one tick of the mouse wheel and that can help to do fine tuned zoom adjustments.


Another thing that can help is to set the target point onto the point of interest, the zoom action will try to approach the target point so if the target point and point you want to get to are one and the same it will usually help to zoom in onto it. You can set the zoom target point to the center of the selected objects by using the "Reset" button on the same bottom-of-viewport toolbar shown above, or also if it's only some particular point of an object you want to zoom onto instead of the whole object use the "Area" zoom button and snap the center point of the zoom area window onto that particular point, it will become the new target point.


Another thing that will change the zoom behavior a lot is if you switch the 3D view from perspective display to parallel projection display instead - you can do that under Options > View > "3D view projection". That will change the 3D viewport projection in the current file, to make it the default for start up of MoI save off a 3DM file with it set how you want and then set that as the startup template file under Options > General > Template file.

- Michael

Thanks Michael.
A very fast and thorough explanation.
cheers,
eric

Hi Eric,

Some other things you can do:

Not to forget that if you press CRL+scroll wheel you have finer steps in zooming...

....or you could get one of these for $99 http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/spacenavigator.html

Cheers
~Danny~

That's another good tip too Danny, I had forgotten about the Ctrl+wheel myself since I'm used to using that zoom button for doing smaller zooms! :)

- Michael

Thanks Michael and Danny ..
Very good tips and quick as a needed breath.
Sometimes I am amazed about all the things I don't know about MoI.
cheers,
eric