Understand the basics of navigating the view of your model is an essential skill for Rhino. Here is a review of the various functions we discussed in class.
Zoom (remember, zooming focuses on the cursor position)
- CTRL (windows) or Command (mac) + hold right click and drag forward (in) and backward (out)
- scroll wheel up and down
- pinch on trackpad (mac). You should use a mouse though.
Pan
- shift + hold right click and drag
- two finger drag on trackpad. Again, use a mouse.
Rotate (aka tumble, orbit)
- hold right click and drag
- two finger hold click and drag on trackpad. But of course, you will be using a mouse
Sometimes when you are viewing your model, you can get lost. This can happen if you zoom in or out to far or your rotate away from your object. When this happens, you can Zoom the “Extents” of your workspace. This means that the “camera” will reposition to display all of the objects contained in your workspace. To do this you can:
- click on the “ZoomExtents” button from the toolbar (looks like a magnifying glass surrounded by four triangles
- from the drop down menu select View>Zoom>Zoom Extents
- Type the command Zoom”, then pick the option “Extents”
Another thing that sometimes happen is you either can’t zoom in, or out any further than you are, or when you rotate the view, your object doesn’t stay centered in the viewport. This happens when the “focus” of the “camera” is not where you want it to be. A useful command to remedy this is Zoom Target. This allows you to select a point to recenter the focus of the camera. To do this you can:
- click on the “Zoom Target” button from the toolbar (it is the right click function of the “Zoom” button, which looks like a magnifying glass that is partially over a square drawn with dotted lines
- from the drop down menu select View>Zoom>Zoom Target
- type the command “Zoom”, then pick the option “Target”
Once the command is running you will be prompted to select a new target. Click where you want your target to be placed, then you can draw a rectangle to establish the extents of the view.
