Manipulating Viewpoints Using the Mouse and Robot

You can pan and rotate all objects in the document at the same time by simply dragging certain parts of the Robot using the mouse.

You can:


  • Pan along the direction of any axis (X, Y or Z) of the Robot
  • Rotate in a plane
  • Pan in a plane
  • Rotate freely about a point on the Robot
  • View the document perpendicular to any of the axes of the Robot.

Related Topics
Selecting Objects

  1. Open any document with geometrical data.

    Important: The Robot and the absolute axis at the bottom right of the document are aligned identically by default.

  2. Rotate to see how the objects, the Robot and the absolute axis are rotated together:



  3. Point to the Robot.

    The cursor shape changes according to the element you are pointing at.

    You will also notice that the following parts of the Robot are highlighted as you point to them:

    • Robot axes
    • Arcs on the planes of the Robot and the planes themselves.

    Important: If you selected the Display manipulation bounding box check box in Tools > Options... > General > Display > Navigation, a box appears around the selected object if it can be manipulated by the Robot:



    The edges of the bounding box around a selected object always remain aligned with the Robot axes.

  4. Drag any axis on the Robot.

    The viewpoint is panned along the direction of the axis. For example, dragging one axis upwards pans up along the axis:



  5. Drag an arc on the Robot.

    For example, dragging one arc to the right rotates the objects in the plane subtended by the arc:

    Dragging close to the blue cube rotates the objects quickly ; dragging further away from the blue cube rotates more slowly. The rotation axis used is the same as that used when rotating using the other rotation tools.

  6. Drag a plane on the Robot.

    For example, dragging to the right one plane moves the objects on the same plane:

    Tip: You can select View > Render Style > Perspective to perceive the effect more easily.

  7. Drag the circle to rotate the objects on a plane:



  8. Right-click the robot and click Show axis labels in the contextual menu.

    Each axis is now identified by a letter.

  9. Point to either X, Y or Z to highlight the letter, then click the letter to make that axis perpendicular to your eye-point.

    Clicking the same letter reverses the point from which you view the objects. For example, clicking the letter Z lets you view the document along the Z axis.