Rotate Left and Right

[Bruce Kieffer]

It would make more sense to have the rotate command be rotate left and rotate right, rather than the + and - way it is now. And even that is backwards to me. As it is now rotate - is clockwise!

[CipesDesign]

Bruce, this is a convention. You will get used it and it will seem like second nature.

[Bruce Kieffer]

Peter,

You would think after 10 plus years I might get used to it, but not so! My suggestion is much more intuitive and no one would new to adjust.

[Michael_Eschenbach]

Bruce...

unhappily enough, though I agree with you, convention means that it has been standard for time immemorium and the chances of changing it are about as good as winning in iraq.

[Ken]

But would it be the lower part rotating left/right or the upper part rotating left/right? Which half (upper or lower) is your intuition?

[P Retondo]

Bruce, I assume that CW and CCW, like Photoshop, etc., would satisfy you.

This issue and the similar discussion of "x" and "y" raises a general question. Do we want the program to use the precise and generally (but not universally!) well-understood mathematical conventions of coordinate geometry, or instead do we want to use more of a layman's vocabulary. In the case of "x", for example, + is right and - is left, compressing the information into a signed number, instead of an attribute (left or right) plus a (always positive) number. Even though the latter is a bit more cumbersome, I suspect it would appeal to a lot of people. (I don't think it would appeal much to NNA to develop and test code for both alternatives to give us a choice of systems, which I think Bruce is suggesting here.)

I would personally rather see engineering time go into other issues, but if the change would sell more programs, maybe we'd end up with more engineering time available!

[islandmon]

As I recall, Strata 3D and other apps. utilize a little rotating icon with arrows showing the orientation of the planes. This seems to be a proven solution ... easy to implement from an existing code-base and could be turned on-off via OIP or prefs. Some User just have a harder time than others visualizing 3d Spacial relationships.

[Jonathan Pickup]

wouldn?t rotate east/west work better for you Bruce... :-)

[Ken]

Well, I do have to agree somewhat with Bruce on ease of use that comes with simplicity. In using the Move command, for example, I always use Polar instead of Cartesian because I hate thinking in plus and minus values. I'd rather memorize that 90 (degrees) is up on the page, 180 is left, 0 is right, 270 is down, etc.

It's still coordinate geometry, but I find it easier to use -- wishing for polar as a user-defined default for the Move command!

[propstuff]

Despite the conventions of Co-ordinate Geometry; my brain seems stuck with the notion that North (0?) is at the top of the map/plan/page, and +ve rotation is clockwise to the East.

Perhaps when NNA implement UCS with VW 12.5..................? ;-)