Two finger panning and double tap zooming on view-only browser navigation

These comments refer to the view-only experience in browsers on mobile devices:

  1. Please introduce two-finger panning and double tap zooming to work with the rotate model
    Button in your online browser read-only viewing app.

  2. If you then still want/need to keep the pan button, can you introduce double finger rotate model and double tap zooming to work with it.

  3. You currently have one button for panning, one for zooming, one for camera view. Zoom can already be performed with two fingers from within each of these buttons so is it really necessary? maybe you can replace this button with a look around, which viewing mode doesn’t exist at all. Keep the zoom extents button.

The current viewer is most unnecessarily cumbersome and frustrating, and you already use the above suggested methods of navigating in the SketchUp app for mobile devices to some extent…

Many thanks!

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although I disagree on the redundancy of the existing tools, I agree, could be nice to have a bit more :

  • place camera / walk / look around, or at least walk / look around could be useful for big models.
  • finger gestures could be nice, my guess is when they get included in the free web version, the viewer fill follow, it’s the same basis

However, I disagree with your third point.

Not everyone has a trackpad, not everyone is fluent in funny finger gestures, not everyone has a mouse with a wheel, or a wheel that can be clicked, or a wheel that works. every time I’ve broken a wheel, the zoom tool has proven a lifesaver (it always breaks at 2am during an allnighter). and the viewer is here even for people who have absolutely no experience of this interface, or 3d.

I’m pretty sure my mom would use the tools before thinking about the gestures.

So I guess the answer is… Both. Both would be good. adding 2-3 “visiting” tools to the current choice.

Thank you for contributing to the discussion. I’m glad you made your point not only because it is perfectly valid but also because it gives me the opportunity to clarify something important.

My comments were related to the navigation interface on mobile devices only, where by now 90% of the people who had anything to do with viewing objects in 3D are familiar with two-finger panning, pinch-zooming and double-tap zooming (courtesy of map navigation to some large extent).

For desktop browsers I agree that the buttons are still necessary although even there, scrolling or pressing mouse wheels could be added to their function. Even if only for the people who are using CAD on their desktops. Everybody else can just use the buttons or, find new ways of interaction through experimentation :).

Since the interface for desktop and mobiles is exactly the same (same html5 page loaded in browsers on both mobiles and desktops) the buttons would have to be kept anyway but please also facilitate navigation gestures for when the model is viewed on a phone or iPad or if there is a trackpad attached to the desktop’s keyboard.

Adding look around button one way or another would be good too and, since there is a shadow button, may as well add time of the day/year.

Thank you!

oww, yes. then yes, off course, buttons are getting redundant (a bit), because fancy gestures are part of the essence of mobile / tablet os.

Modeling on the sketchup for iPad I find it cumbersome and frustrating, maybe I’m just used to do it with a mouse and a keyboard for the shortcuts, I tried to use it when it was released but I didn’t have the patience to get used to the behavior of it, also I there are some plug-ins that are a must for modeling efficiently and it’s not possible to install them on iPad.
Anyways for visualizing it’s a very useful tool, at least for me, I can show my clients the project without having to use my laptop or print images of it.
I don’t think the sketchup team develop a touchscreen friendly web based sketchup viewer version, most of the users use the mobile app to do that. Maybe I’m wrong and they’re already working on it.

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