I have recently been experimenting with modeling in SketchUp using a drawing pen display (with an actual monitor) and came up with an idea of a potential improvement that I’d like to leave here for the developers’ consideration. I own a Huion Kamvas Pro 16 but this topic applies to any tablet that comes with a pen, eg Wacom’s Cintiq lines.
The most important aspect is to correctly map the navigation commands. The pen buttons are mapped as follows:
Ok, so this enables you to use Orbit with Middle Click and Pan with Shift+Middle Click. All good until you realise that zooming is a total inconvenience because the pen lacks a wheel. Your best bet is to press Z > zoom in/out > go back to your previous tool.
My suggestion for a future update
Since the navigation commands in SketchUp are “toggles” (eg if you press and hold MM to Orbit, after you’re done orbiting, it doesn’t stay on the Orbit command but reverts back to your previous tool), turn the Ctrl modifier into a temporary zoom toggle similar to the Shift key.
We use Shift+MM to pan. Let us use Ctrl+LM_drag to be able to zoom in/out. This will solve the problem that prevents fluid pen display modeling in SketchUp.
ctrl would be an issue if you wanted to zoom while using the move tool.
Perhaps alt (although that would invoke autofold when using the move tool) or caps lock would be a better or just the ability to set a key of your choice.
Found this thread by accident, but I like your vision of being able to zoom via cursor movement.
Actually, I get both orbit and pan out of my pen’s (Gaomon PD1161) dedicated middle wheel button without using Shift+. Orbit if the pen is hovering, and pan when the pen is touching the display, which behaves like mouse middle button + left click hold in Sketchup, another shortcut for pan which is impossible to use on a mouse without two fingers.
Given that pen users can pan without shift+, maybe the app prefs could allow users to customize what shift+ toggles. Meanwhile, switching to the zoom “tool” via hotkey (e.g. “Z”) grants zoom-by-cursor capability, but without toggle-status.
By using autohotkey I’m able to Middle button click and drag in order to zoom in and out.
Run the ahk and it should work, at least it works for me right now.
I own a spacemouse too. But It helps anyway.
Settings are very tricky, this is my current set up.
In order to get pan and orbit I mapped the caps key to mimic the MButton functionality with this line of code:
