Viewports Group

You may pan a viewport by holding the Alt and Shift keys down and dragging a viewport. This feature is also activated with the Pan tool (View > Viewports > Pan). If the title bars are visible, you can drag the Move drag button to pan.

Each viewport is a window to a larger world. You can also pan the viewport beneath your mouse by using the cursor keys — one grid square for each press. Holding the Shift key will move the view four grid squares. Holding the Alt key will nudge by one-tenth of a grid square or the (Fixed) Snap Value amount on the Units Tab of the Display Options Panel (Edit > Display Options), if that option is active. Alt + Shift will nudge ten times this amount.

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It may help you to think of this as moving a window around as opposed to moving the object.

Pressing the G key will center your view around the mouse pointer. This is a very quick way to manoeuvre around. Remember this shortcut!

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Other viewports will also change to stay in sync with the window you are changing (unless they are Center/Zoom independent).

The Magnify tool (View > Viewports > Magnify) provides a way to interactively zoom in and out. This feature lets you smoothly zoom in or out of your pointer position by dragging your mouse left and right.

If the title bars are visible, you can drag the zoom drag button to zoom.

In some cases, if you zoom in too far, OpenGL will clip out points and polygons — essentially causing them to disappear. Unfortunately, this is a feature of OpenGL. (Actually, anything that is not in the exact center of the viewport gets clipped. If you center your viewport on an item, it continues to be visible.)

(default keyboard shortcut Ctrl Q)

One way to adjust magnification of a viewport is to use the Zoom tool (View > Viewports > Zoom).

You can drag out a rectangular box using the mouse and the view will automatically zoom in so that the rectangular box fills the view window.

A new command for turning on/off the background image display.

(default keyboard shortcut A)

Fit All Items in Views Items in Views - Automatic Pan and Zoom. This command will automatically fit objects into the viewport. To fit the object in all viewports, use the A key, a shortcut for View > **Viewports ** > Fit All. You’ll often want to use this to center-up an object when it is first loaded.

The Fit One View command (Ctrl + A) will fit the object in the viewport under the mouse pointer into that viewport.

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Other viewports will also change to stay in sync with the window you are changing (unless they are Center/Zoom independent).

(default keyboard shortcut Shift A)

Choose View > Viewports > Fit Selected (or Press Shift + A) to fit only the selected parts of an object into all viewports.

(default keyboard shortcuts < , . >)

Modeler provides many ways to zoom in and out of your viewports. First, you can adjust viewport magnification by pressing the period key (.) to zoom in or the comma key (,) to zoom out. ( These are shortcuts for View > Viewports > More > Zoom In/Zoom Out.) Holding the Shift key while pressing either key (i.e., the &gt; and &lt; keys, on a US keyboard) will double the zoom amount.

These tools are located under the View Tab in Modeler if you choose not to use the shortcut keys.

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Zooming in and out can also be achieved with the scroll wheel of your mouse if you activate the Interface > * Mouse Wheel Zoom* option in Display Options (D)

(default keyboard shortcut Numeric keypad 0)

Choose View > Viewports > Single View to toggle between single and multiple viewports.

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The shortcut key for this function is 0 on the numeric keys. This shortcut allows you to choose the viewport you would like to have in single view. Do this by placing your cursor over the viewport you would like to use and press the 0 key on the numeric keypad.

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Contributed by Richard Feeney