From the course: Inventor 2016 Essential Training

Navigating using the ViewCube - Inventor Tutorial

From the course: Inventor 2016 Essential Training

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Navigating using the ViewCube

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- We're now ready to begin looking at the user interface. The user interface is made of several different components that you'll interact with at different times during the design process. First, on the left, you have the browser. Just above the browser, you have the ribbon bar. Above the ribbon bar is the quick access tool bar. On the right-hand side you have the navigation tools. And then, finally, you have the graphics window, which is where the model is being displayed. We're gonna look at each of these individually, but for right now I wanna start by exploring the view cube. The view cube can be found in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. And you'll notice, as you hover your mouse closer to it, the navigation tools along with the view cube become brighter or more enabled. They also present new capabilities. The home icon shows up and the options button shows up. The view cube is essentially linked to the model, so that moving it will also move the model. For example, if we click on the front view here, you'll see that the model is rotated to the front view. If we click the home icon again its been returned to its default home view, or whatever home view's been assigned. As you hover over the view cube you'll notice different sections that light up in a blue color. This indicates that that area is clickable and will rotate your model to that location. If I simply click each corner on the top, you'll see that I'm rotating 90 degrees around the model looking at each of those locations. Again, if I click my home button, I return to a default home view, or in this case a view that was assigned to this view. Let me show you real quickly how you can change your home view. Let's say for example, rather than this slightly angled perspective, we wanted to see more of an isometric view. We can click on the corner of the view cube so that the orientation we want is viewed on the screen. Once you're in the proper orientation, you can right-click on the view cube. Select Set Current View as Home, and I typically use Fit to View. What this does is zooms the model in so that it fills up as much of the screen as possible. So if I'm zoomed out, for example, or looking at it from a different view and zoomed out, when you click the home button you'll see it rotates to the isometric view or the home view, and it fits the screen. If, for example, you wanted to zoom in and you had an area that you were working on that you wanted to be very specific about, you could zoom in on a specific area and repeat that process. Right-click on the view cube. Select Set Current View as Home, but instead pick Fixed Distance. This will allow you to zoom out, click your home button, and return to that specific view. I'm gonna go ahead and click the corner of the view cube again to zoom out, but I'm gonna reset the home view to be Fit to View. You can also change the labeled views on the model. Say, for example, right now we have top, front, and right side. If we clicked on the right side and say, for example, we expected this to be the front view, we can make a change to that as well. In the same fashion, we can right-click on the view cube but this time select Set Current View As and you have an option for Top or Front. I'm gonna go ahead and select Front and you'll notice that the view cube now says that this is the front view, even though we're looking at it from what I consider the right side view. If you hit the home button you'll see that the home view is maintained, and you see top, left, and front instead of top, front and right. This work comes in really handy if you're receiving files from other people. They may have theirs views set up in a way that doesn't fit your thinking and you can easily change it. I'm gonna go ahead and reset that front view so that you can see it one more time, and so that we can return the model to its original state, by right-clicking, selecting Set Current View As, and selecting Front. Now when we return to the home view, you can see we're back to top, front, and right side as we were before. The next thing I want to mention is the capabilities that are available when you're looking directly at one of the labeled views. If you select the front view, for example, and hover near the view cube, you'll notice that a number of arrows show up that weren't there previously. They all work in a very similar fashion. We'll start with the ones in the upper right-hand corner. The ones that are in a circular orientation. If you click on one of those, it will maintain the current view, viewing it at the front, and rotate 90 degrees. So, for example, after a fourth click, we're back to the exact same location we were previously. The other arrow works the exact same way, just in the opposite direction. Each of the arrows that are around the outside of the view cube also rotate in 90 degree increments. But instead of maintaining the current view they will rotate to the next to view on the view cube. If I'm looking at the front, and I click the arrow on the top, I'll get the top view. If I'm looking at the top, and I click the arrow at the top of the view cube, I'll get the back. Except the model's upside down cause we've just flipped the viewpoint over 180 degrees. Finally we'll click that arrow two more times and we've returned back to our original view.

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