Wheel-Pan / Wheel-Zoom

[Chris D]

A more thorough implementation of wheel-mouse functionality.

At the moment, wheel-zoom is supported, but only by holding down the ALT key, which is used for many other things, including copy, which can lead to mistakes.

Wheel-pan (press the wheel and drag) is not supported at all.

Native wheel scrolling currently performs a not-very-useful screen scroll, which would be redundant if wheel-panning was supported.

If you need a good example of wheel functionality, see ArchiCAD, AutoCAD or Revit.

[jan15]

What OS are you using? The "wheel-pan" you spoke of works for me, in VW10 on Windows 2000.

By the way, are you aware of all the panning and zooming options, including "boomerang" panning?

While using any other tool, and without cancelling that tool, you can:

1. PAN (move around the page, as if by pressing your hand against the paper and then moving your hand around) -- by holding the space bar down and click-dragging with the mouse.

2. SCROLL up and down -- by rotating the scroll wheel on the mouse.

3. SCROLL left and right -- by holding the Shift key down and rotating the scroll wheel.

4. ZOOM in and out -- by holding the Ctrl key down and rotating the scroll wheel.

I tested all that in version 10.0.0 under Windows 2000. I don't know what the equivalents would be for Mac.

Also, in any version, you can move up/down/left/right just by dragging off the screen. That is, the screen follows your mouse movement when dragging.

And the arrow keys perform an incremental scroll. And if you hit the key for the Zoom In or Zoom Out tool twice you get an incremental zoom.

[Chris D]

I'm on Mac OS X (not Panther), with a Microsoft wheel mouse and VW10.5

I'm aware of the space bar + left button pan, but it's a two handed operation which you can't use for instance while doing a copy.

The ALT key is the modifier that makes the wheel zoom on a Mac, but again it's a 2 handed operation that means you can't copy (for instance) at the same time, without great dexterity.

We need a setting in VW (which you don't have to use after all...) that can make the wheel pan when pressed, and zoom when scrolled, WITHOUT modifier keys. Maybe this works with a Logitech mouse on certain op systems, but it's neither documented nor supported by VW.

[jan15]

Until I read your reply and experimented a little, I didn't realize they had changed the Copy procedure. I still use version 8 when drawing.

In version 8 you press the modifier key only while making the copy, then release it and drag the copy wherever you want with one-hand.

But, as you know, in version 10 you have to keep holding the modifier key down until you've finished dragging, or the operation reverts to being a Move. That's unfortunate. It's just one of many ways in which versions 9 and 10 have been dumbed down as compared to 8.

So I agree there's a wish here, but I think it should be to revert to the old Copy procedure.

However, I noticed that you don't have to keep holding the modifier key during the boomerang-pan. While drag-copying, you can release Ctrl (Alt on a Mac), boomerang-pan with the Space bar, then return to Ctrl (or Alt) and resume the Copy.

I would be more inclined to work around this by drag-copying close to the original, then picking up the duplicate and dragging it elsewhere with one hand.

Alternatively, you could drag-copy to the edge of the screen and let the screen automatically move with your cursor.

[jan15]

Oh, and as far as wheel-panning in VectorWorks, I'm doing that with a Microsoft Optical Intellimouse, with the function of the wheel button left as the default function of "Auto-Scroll".

But doing that during a drag-Copy would be a real feat of dexterity. I'd have to hold down two mouse buttons plus the modifier key all at the same time.