I am using SketchUp to draw a 2D floor plan. I can easily set the camera view as required by using Camera/Standard Views/Top.
It would be very useful to be also able to rotate the view (rotate the camera around its axis of view) by 90 °. Unfortunately the only suitable single-step tool for this seems to be Camera/Orbit which has these disadvantages:
The Orbit tool does not snap according to the Enable Angle Snapping setting (or other similar). I would like to do a perfect 90° rotation to avoid jagged and tilted lines.
With the Orbit tool I am not sure if a did rotate only around the blue axis (perpendicular to my drawing plane). Otherwise the 2D image gets distorted.
It seems that it is not possible to control the Orbit tool from the keyboard.
I have found this multi-step solution:
For all the rotations I would like to use I can create scenes and then I can use PageUp / PageDown to switch them but the initial configuration is not as simple as I would like. Is not there a better solution (a free extension)?
I didn’t immediately understand that you were talking about remaining in a top down view, but turning your downward view by 90 degrees. At first I thought you could just use a Side view, and you would have your 90 degrees rotation!
Assuming I’ve got it now, and you want to rotate your downward view, I don’t know of a way to make the camera do exactly that. You could do the steps you showed and then create a Scene. After that you only have to click on the scene’s tab to go to that view point.
Another work around would be to put the whole floor plan into a group, which you could easily rotate with the Move tool to get it to any angle.