Resizing viewports in LayOut has always been slow / laggy / jumpy for me, probably due to my low end graphics hardware. The “Alt about center” modifier would be a timesaver, but it does not work on viewports for me. It works fine on drawn objects like rectangles though.
When I use the Alt key while dragging the side or corner of a viewport, it looks like it is working, showing the viewport changing size about its center … but when I release the mouse button, LayOut starts to blink, hiccup, and otherwise convulse. Several seconds later, when the seizure ends, the viewport snaps back to only be resized in one direction.
Is the “Alt about center” feature supposed to work for viewports? If so, any suggestions for making mine work would be much appreciated.
And before someone posts the fact that we can just adjust each side separately, there are two facts to consider. (1) If the interface tells you that a means works a certain way, then it should work this way, and (2) if every command only “half-worked” then we’d all end up doing twice the work and taking much longer. (Ignoring the extra clicks that contribute to medical wear on joints and tendons, time is money so this is unacceptable.)
I appreciate knowing that upgrading my graphics card wouldn’t solve this for me, and also knowing that it’s not just me that this behavior does not work for.
I thought it worked for you because I’ve seen you mention using the “Alt about center” behavior in other threads.
I’ve been using Pro / LayOut for about three years, and the “Alt about center” behavior has never worked for me. I’m currently running 19.2.222 64-bit on Windows 8.1.
Looks like I will continue to resize Layout 2019 viewports one side / corner at a time … but on the bright side, I’ll do it very slowly!
AH, … tapping does not work (for me as it just activates the menu,) however …
@trent I can get it to work if I hold ALT down the whole time and not let it up until after I release the mouse drag. I was trying to release them both at the same time (previously when it did not work.)
ADD: When I say I have to hold ALT, I mean what seems an excessive amount of time past the release of the LMB. I must wait until the viewport finishes the jitter dance and settles into the proper new view. The selection border also flashes to kind of signal the end of the resize and only then can I release the ALT key. (This does not seem intuitive to me at all.)
Model size doesn’t seem to matter in my case. The one I’m currently working on is just a few rectangular shapes for a plywood shelving unit.
Good question. When I saw Dave’s example with preserve scale on resize off, I went back and tested with both conditions. Still couldn’t get it to work with either.
It seems like I’ve tried a lot of different sequences for tapping / holding / releasing the Alt key, to no avail. I have not tried to hold the Alt key down until the viewport resize jitter dance is all the way done … which sometimes can be up to a minute or more. I’ll give that a go later this morning.
Here, resizing the viewport about its center works regardless of the whether Preserve Scale is selected or not. Of course with it not selected, the model size doesn’t change.
I finally got “Alt about center” to work for resizing my viewports, with Dan’s comments about the timing of the Alt key release. Here’s the sequence that now works for me:
LMB DN - ALT DN - LMB DRAG - LMB UP - Wait until the viewport updated is complete - ALT UP
Thank you, everyone, for this discussion and solution. It will definitely improve my LayOut work flow.
Now to dive into figuring out how I can improve the performance of basic LayOut tasks on my system. If I don’t find good information, I will start another thread.
That’s what I was doing in my GIFs. I didn’t mention that part because your description made it sound like you weren’t getting the resize about center indication at all. Sorry.
As for speeding things up, I leave rendering set to Raster and initially use the Hidden Line style for the scenes in SketchUp. That makes placing and sizing viewports faster and I usually don’t need to see textures myself when I’m creating a document. After I’ve finished manipulating the viewports, I go back to SketchUp, change the style to suit for the scenes, save, update the reference in LO and move on. I only need to do that once. Of course this does require that you avoid modifying scenes in LO.
No worries, resizing viewports is so slow for me that I really don’t get any indication when I drag a side / corner for many seconds, if at all. The blue frame lags my mouse drag, so I use the arrowheads on the cursor to guess where the frame will eventually end up.
Thanks for these techniques. I will definitely incorporate them into my LayOut work flow. It will be interesting to see how much of a performance increase I see. Now, I generally have my cover sheet perspective view set to Hybrid, and all other views set to Vector. I did try turning Auto Render off, but it didn’t seem to make any difference in the jittery, laggy behavior of resizing viewports.
Oh, I would NEVER modify scenes in LayOut!! “Someone” beat that lesson into me long ago.
Oh, I would NEVER modify scenes in LayOut!! “Someone” beat that lesson into me long ago. 