Vectorworks permanently zooming out

[Christiaan]

Has anyone come across a problem where VW permanently zooms out? I've had it a couple of times in the past two weeks.

I'm not sure if I've inadvertently hit a key on on the keyboard to trigger it but if VW is the front application my drawing space will permanently zoom out.

Restarting VW did nothing. Only a restarting the machine fixed it, which says it might have something to do with Mac OS X.

(using: VW 2008 SP3 build 88670)

[Christiaan]

Well I say a restart fixed it, but now it seems to zoom whenever I move the mouse to the right.

[M.CH]

Have you cleaned your mouse lately?

[Christiaan]

Yeah mouse is fine. I removed it and the keyboard and this made no difference.

With regard to it zooming when I mouse right this seems to have gone away throughout the morning.

[Christiaan]

It's back!!

Restart doesn't work. Deleting Preference file doesn't work. Disconnecting keyboard and mouse doesn't work. Different mouse doesn't work. Doesn't matter which file I have open. Happens on my machine only. Window needs to be active for it to take place (i.e. doesn't happen while window is in background). This time it's just panning to the left, not zooming.

I really can't figure out what the problem might be.

A command is taking place because I can undo do it as it goes.

Any ideas? Can't do any work!

[Christiaan]

Restarted with different mouse and keyboard and it went away, but after a couple of restarts with different combinations, trying to isolate the mouse or keyboard, I now have the problem with both the different keyboard and mouse, only this time it's purely zooming out and very fast rate.

Completely baffled.

[Christiaan]

Oh boy, you're going to love this one.

Turns out to my SpaceNavigator is still plugged, relagated to the back of my desk, but up against the phone.

The different behaiviours I was getting was from the SpaceNavigator getting nudged slightly as I changed keyboards.

How hilarious! Glad I've finally figured it out.

[Tobias]

Christian, I've had that exact same problem. Very disconcerting when it's happening. Gotta draw fast under those conditions!

[IanH]

That has brightened up my day. Often its the most obvious of things.

I spent yesterday afternoon worrying that the house was on fire - I heard a smoke detector briefly go off, but when I checked them, could find no evidence of smoke or anything else what may have triggered them and the batteries were quite fresh and the tongue test proved they were not flat . Thought I was going mad. It then happened again in the evening and my wife heard it too. Getting worried again, we investigated further - again, nothing to set them off and the sound was kind of distant so we were not sure which one had gone off anyhow. Then suddenly, there was another one and all eyes shot to the computer. Turns out that it was a desktop app that I had recently installed that sounded an alarm whenever an RNLI lifeboat was launched. If had not been in the same room when it had gone off, we would have been worrying about that one for ages. Unlike the guy who climbed into the sea from Eastbourne Pier, out night was thankfully without further worry.

[Christiaan]

Heh, yes, Ockham's razor comes to mind.