Whenever I try to zoom with my scroll wheel, my camera will teleport forward after a few scrolls, and the point of orbit will also reset to a farther point. This means that when I try to zoom into small details, my camera will teleport into the model and reset before I can even see the details. Even when I try to use zoom to draw out a window, either my camera will eventually teleport into the model, or the cameras clipping plane will cut away the detail, making it impossible to see.
I have never had these problems in Rhino 5. Is there a way to go back to Rhino 5 camera settings?
Hi Cody - if you are zooming perpsctive viewport, Zoom Target is generally more useful than the scroll wheel or Zoom Window because it resets the camera target. Once you get zoomed in very close in a scene that is much larger than the camera-to-target distance, it usually pays to just switch to a parallel projection.
Hi Pascal,
Thanks for the reply. I’m actually working in a very small environment, jewelry, where this is an issue. I don’t see a command or tool for Zoom Target, would you please expound?
Thank you! That does help but slows down the process with having to use another tool to zoom instead of the mouse wheel…
Is there not a way to adjust the camera near clipping plane? I found some instructions to do this but the settings referenced are not in Rhino 7 as far as I can tell…
You can also try the zoom selected command (zs). Just select the thing you wanna see and type “zs” + enter. After this you can use your mouse wheel normally for zooming, because the camera target is nearby.
Rhino options > Units > Model:
Model units: Millimeters
Absolute tolerance: 0,001 or 0,0001 units
Angle tolerance: 0,1 degrees
Distance display: Decimal
Display precision: 1,0000000
There settings work very well with rotating the camera around objects as small as 0,1 mm fit to the whole viewport. You may need to adjust the mesh settings of the scene, especially “Maximum distance, edge to surface” set to 0,01 units.
Alternatively, create your models 10 times bigger, then scale down the final production model to its true size.
For what it’s worth, this is my way of dealing with the zoom issue (also valid for the erratic rotations in Perspective view).
If you unselect everything, you can choose to place the camera target in the Properties window.
The selected point becomes the center of rotation and the zoom focus point.
To avoid having to click on that button, I changed my Ctrl+W shortcut to this monstrosity : ! -ViewportProperties T PAUSE ENTER
It’s very quick to launch that shortcut prior to any pan/rotate/zoom, then use the mouse controls as usual.
This is the “Place target” tool, also accessible from the following icon located in the “Set view” toolbar. The exact command is ! _-ViewportProperties _CameraTarget _Enter _Pause _Enter
Targeting is included in Zoom Target - presumably if Zoom Target is an undesireable extra step,as the O.P. has said, then so is anything else that sets the target, I guess…
Assuming that both icons are already on any visible toolbar, “Place target” is nearly instant, because it requires only 1 mouse click after activating the command, whereas the “Zoom target” requires a combination of one mouse click, then dragging of the mouse to draw a zoom window, and finishing with a second mouse click. Also, with the camera already being close enough to the desired object, there is no need for any zoom with “Zoom target”. The latter could be still used in this situation, but then the dragging with the mouse across the entire viewport to avoid the extra zoom as much as possible is even slower.
Thank you for all the tool tips on working around this issue.
I find ZS mapped to a G key performs well for my workflow.
Please, I would still like an answer to the question about the camera near clipping plane. Is this a bug or is there just no way to change the distance? Thanks.
There is one more tool that has not been mentioned.
In a Perspective projection view, the wheel Zoom does not push the Camera “target” ahead.
In a Parallel projection view, it does.
You can force the Perspective view to push the target by holding the Alt key when you wheel Zoom.
The risk here is you can easily Zoom right on past your objects, but it does work.
For me as an zoom selected user, it would be nice if we could have “Rotate view around Gumball” setting that would “stay on” after you deselect. Now the setting only works flawless when you have the thing that you’re working on selected, but if you deselect the thing your camera target might be some random place and you cannot zoom or rotate around normally… and you have to use zoom selected etc.
Rotate view around Gumball setting is found in the modeling aids under Gumball.
