Many vacuum systems involve long tube type chambers. When you are zoomed in working on one section far from the origin (view scale length > distance to origin) you have zoom out to rotate to keep the section in view and then zoom back in because the rotation is about the origin. You have to do this 2-3 times before you got the view you needed. It would be A LOT more convenient if it would just rotate in the center of the current view like they do in SolidWorks.
Thanks,
Alan
Hello Alan,
I understand the request, but for clarity, I think your request specification is not correct.
Molflow does rotate around the centre of the current view, as you want, not the origin!
I demonstrate it with a pipe in this Youtube screen recording, as you can see the point that stays in the same place is always the center of the screen:
The problem is not the pivot point (rotation invariant), but that a long pipe in orthographic projection (the default in Molflow) compresses brutally one dimension. If that dimension is the depth (i.e. you are looking a thin pipe from the front), then your rotation centerpoint will be “deep in the screen” and the rotation will be too fast, as I demonstrate here:
Can you confirm until here?
I can’t test Solidworks behavior (we don’t have it), but most CAD programs rotate around the mouse pointer’s intersection with the model (not the view centre), as here in ANSYS:
This is a smart algorithm that launches a ray towards the model, and rotates around the first collision. I don’t say it’s impossible to implement in Molflow but quite a lot of work. Also, I’d have to treat edge cases when to user clicks on an empty space (no model under the pointer).
Just to be clear, is this the behavior you’d like?
I might also experiment with workarounds, like rotating around the selected vertex (if only one selected) or rotating aroung the currently selected facet.
Thanks, Marton