I don’t believe this is a feature, not one I’ve found in help documents, and feel it could benefit a lot of users.
There are many times when changing orientation, I drag the orientation cube, find just the perfect view, release the orientation cube, and the program decides “nah, you should look at it from this perspective”, and it spins and snaps toward a nearby perspective. That might be one of the faces of the orientation cube, the edges, or the corner vertices.
If I want one of those views, I can click that face, edge, or vertex on the cube. If I don’t choose one of those, I prefer to have it stay wherever I set it after dragging.
Sometimes it does it, and sometimes it doesn’t. I have looked everywhere for a way to disable this, so I can pick my ideal view.
Additionally, it would also be helpful to have the orientation cube present in Visualization mode. Moving around on Mac, and especially on iPad is difficult without this.
Hmm, the orientation cube should normally stay where you left it, it should not move after you release it. Could you perhaps enable Tutorial Mode in settings so that we can see your clicks & gestures and record a video of it?
Also, out of curiosity: what makes you prefer using the orientation cube for the fine positioning of your view? Most users use touch gestures on the iPad or the mouse on desktop platforms for this, and that’s what we’ve optimized the user experience for.
Using the orientation cube is a single point approach. Doesn’t require additional input from keyboard. You just click and drag, and it moves as you need it to. If using iPad it’s pretty intuitive, but requiring shift key to be held makes it a two handed thing. Not bad, but just an observation on economy of motion.
I use my MacBook occasionally at my desk with keyboard and mouse, but often use it on its own. My right hand does most of the work with the trackpad. I occasionally use the left, but only to type in a dimension when necessary - and I prefer to not just leave it resting on the laptop. So much of everything else is all the right hand. So requiring the shift key to be held for every reorientation of the workspace creates a lot of back and forth motion.
I have used the orientation cube for positioning ever since I started using Shapr3D because it was the most obvious and intuitive means of positioning. It was right there, it was obvious what it did, and easy to figure out how it worked. While shift + secondary click / two finger drag works well, it’s not something you would know to do unless you’d read instructions.
And that’s something I’ve appreciated about Shapr3D is that I never really had to READ the instructions to figure out how to use it. And that’s what has helped me to turn so many other people onto the program and get them designing, people who have found other programs incredulously difficult to use. As a devoted Apple user, I feel like if Apple had designed a CAD program, this would be it - because it just works.
Bigger issue for me is it wanting to pop where it wants to, and also not having it in Visualization, which just feels like more of an accidental omission than something on purpose - but hey, there could be a reason for it missing that I’m missing!
Doesn’t do it every time, but does it several times in the video.
Thanks for the recording, it’s clear now – and I could reproduce it as well. It’s certainly a bug (that’s only present on iPad and Mac), I’ve added it to our backlog, though I can’t commit to an ETA for this right now.
Making sure you can learn the app without a manual was indeed our design goal, and we’re glad we’ve succeeded in that
Thanks, @Peter_Gy! Bug as though it may be, it’s definitely not a critical thing - certainly something I can live without. Thanks for your attention to it, and for helping to create such a fantastic program!
Thanks for your attention to it, and for helping to create such a fantastic program!