ANY cure for the zooming problem?

hellnbak · 31 Oct 2010, 23:42

I know this has been talked about before, but I was just hoping that maybe somebody knows how to fix, or at least minimize the zooming problem. Seems like I spend half my time panning and rotating like a madman trying to find a position that will let me zoom in or out. It's driving me NUTS! Is Google trying to do anything about this at all?

pyroluna · 31 Oct 2010, 23:49

I wasn't aware there was a problem?
SU zooms to or from where your cursor is positioned over if you use the scrollwheel.
SU zooms to or from the middle of the screen if you use the magnifying glass tool.

So what is the problem with that?

hellnbak · 1 Nov 2010, 00:18

I thought I had read where other people had this problem. Frequently when I attempt to zoom, in or out, it does nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, if you look very closely you can see that it is moving very very very minutely. The only way out of this is to pan and/or rotate until it seems to find a position that suits it, then it works. Until the next time, which comes all to soon. Of course, by then you are far away from where you were working. I've updated my graphics card drivers, no help. I thought it was a glitch in SU and that Google was aware of it. Maybe that came from a dream. I really love SU, it's become almost an obsession with me (but that's no problem, I don't have a life to interfere with), and this forum is great, but this problem is really getting to me.

Rich O Brien · 1 Nov 2010, 00:23

SU zooms to where your cursor is, so if you zoom while hovering over nothin' it can zoom (or rather not zoom) slowly. Orbiting to is effected depending on where your cursor is.

Although never ever ever right click empty space and choose 'Explode'. We've lost many a member that way and it ain't pretty...

Khai · 1 Nov 2010, 00:40

I have the same problem. there's many times when I have the mousewheel spinning and nothing happens on screen. I have to basically pan the view to get the mousewheel back... also I have problems with panning, making a movement and bam. I'm suddenly far far away from the model.

I've had to give up on SU8 since it's so bad in that....

hellnbak · 1 Nov 2010, 00:53

Great, it must be my computer. Thanks.

Ross Macintosh · 1 Nov 2010, 09:19

Hellnbak - I'm guessing you are having a "clipping plane" problem where its like an invisible plain clips the model preventing you from zooming close. In your question you weren't very specific about your problem so the responses just refer to zooming in general.

The clipping plain problem has always been present in SketchUp. If you do a search here for it you'll find hours of reading. You may have noticed some models experience it more than others. Factors that can trigger it are very large models --- not large as in file size but ones that take up lots of 3d space. For instance if you try modelling an airport with all its runways you will experience clipping more than just modelling a single jet. Even with "small" models you will experience the clipping if any part of the model is far from the axis origin. It is good practice to always model close to the axis origin when you can. If you are and still have a problem it may be that there is some stray geometry (like a short line) far away that may be screwing things up. A way to check is to turn on display of hidden geometry (in the view menu) and zoom to extents. Doing that you may find there was some line or other element located far away from the rest of the model. If you eliminate it the clipping problem can improve.

Sometimes it seems no matter what you do it is near impossible to zoom in close enough to fix a particular problem. #%&@ that clipping plane! At those times you can try switching from the typical perspective view to the "parallel projection" display mode and see if it allows you to get in closer. I will do that, fix the problem, and then return to perspective mode.

Anyways I hope this helps. As I noted you can do a search on "clipping" and find lots more discussion.

Regards, Ross

Jean Lemire · 1 Nov 2010, 15:29

Hi folks.

Normally, the cursor must be over some geometry for the Zoom to work well. As pointed out by others, if the cursor is over empty space, the Zoom tool will do close to nothing.

However, I noticed that sometimes, even if the cursor is over something, the zoom doesn't work. I need to pan or orbit a little to "wake up" SU. Then the Zoom tool works again. This happens on my Mac quite often with SU 7.1. Although, I have not used SU 8 enough on it to ascertain if this strange behavior is still present.

Just ideas.

thomthom · 1 Nov 2010, 15:36

@jean lemire said:

As pointed out by others, if the cursor is over empty space, the Zoom tool will do close to nothing.

Zooming with the mouse wheel over empty space makes it do large jumps.