Viewing a model in Alias

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When using the ViewCube, you have to move your cursor away from your geometry.

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So to stay more focused,

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you can alternatively just use the Shift and Alt keys on the keyboard

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and then just click and drag with the left mouse button to tumble the view,

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or the middle mouse button to pan.

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And then if you use the right mouse button to zoom,

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you'll find that moving the cursor in this diagonal

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gives you the most responsive in and out movement.

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And the focus point for that zoom is called the point of interest.

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And it's shown by this manipulator when you hold down the Shift

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and Alt.

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And keeping those held down,

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you can reposition it by just doing a click

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and release on a different piece of the geometry.

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And then this becomes the center for the zooming and the tumbling.

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Back up here on the ViewCube,

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we've got a Fit View icon

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which you can use at any time to reframe the model into the center of the view.

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Or you can just use the default hot key, which is F.

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Sometimes you want to work in a flat 2D view.

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So here on the ViewCube, you can choose one of these faces and get a side view

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or use these arrows to switch to a top view

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or to a back view.

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And when this face is shown green and only two axes are shown here,

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then it's a true 2D view.

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But as soon as you tumble,

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you're back in the perspective view with all three axes showing.

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But if you prefer to work in a drawing board layout, then up here on the layouts menu,

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you can have four window panes, for example, or two,

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or switch to these single pane views.

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And you can see that all of these have hotkeys assigned.

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But often the easiest way to work is simply

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to double-click on the perspective view title bar

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and that switches to four planes with the perspective view up here.

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And then these three are fixed 2D views which can be panned and zoomed

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either synchronized like this,

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or if I turn off the window sync on the Layouts menu,

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I can view them independently.

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But I can't tumble these 2D views.

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So I can just double-click again on the title bar

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up here to toggle back to the full size perspective view.

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Or I can just use the F10 hotkey to toggle between layouts.