Seleced parts arrows (move rotate etc) should center in the view space not the world space when zoomed way in

repeatedly having to zoom in and out to re-acquire the parts move/rotate arrows for part movement alignment is painful. when you are zoomed way in, the selected parts cursor arrows should show on the part IN the VIEW window, not center on the part in ‘world view.’

When you have large and small parts, and you are zoomed way in to align multiple parts to an edge or whatever, it’s quite tedious to have to zoom way out to re-acquire and move the arrows over to where you are working, then zoom way in again to start aligning the edges again.

sure I can constantly zoom in and out but the whole principal of Shapr3d is fast modeling. This would MASSIVELY speed up and minimize zooming and repositioning to continue aligning parts

Though it can feel unintuitive sometimes, it’s important to understand why we choose the current behaviour.

The gizmo / arrows aren’t just there to move, but also to rotate. You can move the whole gizmo, and wherever you position it, that will be the center of rotation, as well as the point from where that movement starts from.

Currently, it’s the center of the bounding box of the body / bodies selected by default, as that is the safest position, so it’s less likely that accidental incorrect movement / rotation happens.

For accurate aligning, both the Align tool, and the Translate tool are usually better options than the simple move / rotate.

Could you give some examples, when you think the move / rotate tool is a better option for you, and the current behaviour causes problems? A short video might help a lot in understanding your use case.

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I actually like the way it is now. Works fine for me.

This keeps coming up. I for one agree that having to constantly zoom out, move the widget and zoom back in to what I was doing before then moving/rotating, is really tedious. Even more so when you loose selection on the object and have to go through the whole process again.

I am often working zoomed in which requires zooming out every time I need to move something. I work on buildings which are an order or two of magnitude larger than the distances I am often moving things.

I very rarely need to rotate around the centre of the bounding box and I am most often wanting to move an object small amounts (relative to the object size) when zoomed in.

I understand that there is some reasoning behind the current behaviour but it doesn’t suit everyone. Is there not the possibility of a simple option of view centred or bounding box centred? This would keep everyone happy.

Thanks

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I fully understand the premise of how it currently works, as well as why it would ‘center’ on the selected item. Often though align and translate tools are of no use if the parts you are moving are not oriented where faces could to be aligned. As an example… if you have 3 or 4 items selected as a sub assy, how would you align a group of items? (can you even?) as you can’t select a face without losing the group.

So you move the group. Then find you need to move one item just as bit. Selecting the group of parts, has now moved the arrows out of view because of the center of the one large long part. you have to zoom out to move the arrows, then zoom back in to manually align the object group again…rinse and repeat. It gets very tedious

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Align and translate tools work with multiple bodies too. Though as you said, it’s not always good solution.

I’ve tried that several times, different order of selecting the objects in the group, … ALIGN will highlight one face with corners denoted with ‘point’ circles… but even when carefully selecting a possible mating face it does not align the ‘group’ properly

Could you create a short video about the problem?

in this vid example… I cannot select the threaded portion that needs to go into the hole. any other surface I pick from the group, will not align the group on the correct side. It doesn’t matter if I try to align the U shaped block to the group instead…you can’t select the threads to align with the hole and have the smaller red block end up on this front view (inside the U block)
vid too big see https://www.teglerizer.com/3DPrinters/Shapr3DforumALIGNissue.mp4

When you use the align tool, you can still move the body with the arrows presented at the last step to fine tone the position. I think your second attempt was actually perfect for what you want to do, you just need to drag the arrow and move the group of object into position with it.

that vid was a massively dumbed down version of the issue. The premise was the ‘zooming’ issue.
you can’t select the threads to align with a hole through the part… if I’d included the long rail I’d have to zoom out to grab the arrows. so by previous conversations here, ALIGN is NOT an alternative to the zooming and arrow re-acquisition issue

Indeed, it’s not.