Switching to TOP view - camera gets lost

Hi!
Probably most of you experienced that inconvenience in SketchUp - when you work in perspective or axonometric projection and then switch the view to TOP, the view is completely lost - camera takes me to another part of my drawing. It is particularly irritating when working with large drawings like ACAD-exported plans.
Is there any cure - inside SU or plugin - that would help switching to TOP more precisely?

I haven’t ever had that problem with my models. Perhaps you can upload a SketchUp file in which that happens so we can see and have some hope of helping you.

Shall I upload about 200 files that I already created with sketchup? :rofl:

Sorry, it just happens with every file.

If it happens with every file, one should be enough.

You’re right - here’s the file:

Untitled.skp (2.1 MB)

I’ve just noticed that it mainly happens with files that have content imported from AutoCAD - not in fact with every file (I was wrong). So it is probably one of many bugs that appear in SU after importing things from ACAD.
I think I’ll do best creating a scene with top camera and use the scene instead of pressing TOP VIEW.

Now I’m just curious if it also happens when someone else opens my file. Cuz I don’t believe it can be repaired.

Hmmmm… Your file opened looking like this.

After switching to the Top standard view I see this:

Based on this, I can’t say there’s anything wrong with your file.

Same here as with Dave. When I opened the file, SketchUp reported that it fixed duplicate component definition names, but otherwise it works as expected.

I think I can see what @michal.p means. If you zoom in on one area, say the bottom right in top view. Then rotate the camera a bit with the orbit tool until it is no longer a top view. Now change the camera tool to top view. The camera is still zoomed in, but it is now looking at the centre of the large group. If you explode the group, it no longer does this. Re-group it and it keeps moving to the centre of the group again when you select Top view.

Zoom Extents would take care of that, too.

Here’s the phenomenon @michal.p is reporting:

top hop

Yes. zoom extents recenters the view, but it certainly jumps when you activate top view.

Zoomed in to bottom right, rotated slightly so not in plan/top view:

zoom btm left

Set camera to top view:
top

The red rectangles show the approximate positions of bottom right view and the position the camera moved to the centre.

centre

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Thank you for a precise analysis of the problem!

Like McGordon suggested, exploding group is the cure. I wish I didn’t have to work mainly inside groups :stuck_out_tongue:

I would avoid exploding groups as that takes the layer of the group and apply it to individual faces and edges. Attributes and axes placement are also lost. It is very strange exploding a group affects the camera and sounds much like a bug to me.

I’ve made an extension that aligns the camera to a face. It lets you either center the camera over the point you click or rotate the camera on the exact spot where it already is. This should give a very predictable result. It has the downside though that it needs a face to be clicked.

https://extensions.sketchup.com/pl/content/eneroth-align-view

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