From the course: Autodesk Inventor 2019 Essential Training

Navigating using the navigation tools - Inventor Tutorial

From the course: Autodesk Inventor 2019 Essential Training

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Navigating using the navigation tools

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- [Instructor] We're now ready to continue looking at the user interface by exploring the navigation bar. The navigation bar is found on the right-hand side of the graphics window, just below the View Cube. We're going to start by going through all the tools. I'm go ahead skip the first one, which is the full navigation wheel, and we'll come back to that in a minute. I'll also mention that I very rarely use the tools that are in this toolbar, and the reason for that is there are shortcuts that make it easier to do without having to return to the menu each time. I'll show you each of the commands and how they work, and then, I'll return and show you what the shortcuts are. We're going to skip the first item and come back to that, and we'll go to the Hand option, which is the Pan tool. By clicking on the Pan tool, this allows you to left-click and drag your mouse to reposition the model anywhere within the view port. When you're finished, you can right-click on the screen and select OK or Done. Or, as indicated here, you can hit Escape on the keyboard as well. Next, we have the Zoom tool, and you'll notice there's an arrow below the Zoom tool. Anywhere in Inventor where you see an arrow below a tool or a menu, indicates that there are additional options available to you that are hidden, and the arrow is the way to expand those. By default, if we're zoomed out, the default tool on the Zoom is Zoom All. If you click the arrow, you also have Zoom, which allows you to left-click and drag and push away from you to zoom out, or pull towards you to zoom in, or we have the option to Zoom Window. This allows you to drag or create a rectangle around what you want to zoom in on by left-clicking and holding your mouse and dragging to create a rectangle. You'll notice, where we first click, there's a small x on the screen. While still holding the mouse button down, if you move your cursor, you can readjust where the zoom window is located to essentially combine a zoom in a pan. It comes it quite handy when you are in a hurry, and you click somewhere that wasn't exactly right, you can make minor adjustments on the fly. Let's go ahead and return to the Home View and look at the final option. The last option is Zoom Selected. It allows you to select a specific point and zoom that to the center of the screen. You'll also notice that if you select one of the options that is a subitem to a command, it will maintain that as the last option you selected as the default tool. So, if you're going to use Zoom All frequently, you'll want to return to that so it is the default tool. The next item is the Orbit command. The Orbit command allows you to rotate in many different ways. You'll notice the head-up display has marks at each quadrant, and it has a plus in the symbol, along with the circle that is the orbit sphere. If you left-click and drag anywhere inside the circle, you get a free orbit that allows you to move in any direction. If, while we're in this command, we click on the front view, we can look at more specifically what these quadrant tools do. If you're looking at a view, for example, the front view, and you left-click and drag on this quadrant on the right, it will essentially maintain that access and rotate as if it's on a turntable. It's essentially doing the same thing that the View Cube does when you click on one of these arrows. But rather than taking a full 90-degree move, it will allow you to do fine tuning into your exact angle you want. It will also snap when it gets to one of the labeled views. The other option you have is to select, within the area around the circle that is in the same vicinity as the quadrant. This will allow you to maintain the view that you're in and rotate around that view without changing this front view. Once you're finished with the Orbit command, you can either right-click and select OK or Done or hit Escape on the keyboard. Or, if you move far enough away from the heads-up display, you'll notice an arrow show up next to your cursor. If you click when you see that, you can exit the command there as well. Finally, you have the Look At tool. Let me return to a Home View to start this one. The Look At tool allows you to select a specific face and rotate to that orientation. If I click Look At, and I pick the angled face here, I'm now looking normal to that face, and I could begin sketching or evaluating my model as needed. I'm going to return to my Home View one more time. And finally, down at the bottom, we have our Options button. This allows us to enable or disable other options that might be handy for us. For example, once I show you the shortcuts, if you don't use Pan, Zoom, and Orbit, you can uncheck these to turn them off. There are a couple of items on here I'll mention that might be worth looking at, and that's the Projection and Visual Styles. These are items that I typically turn on that not everybody would use, but they can come in quite handy. They allow you to switch between an Orthographic view and a Perspective view without having to go to the View tab to make that change. Here on the View tab, under the Appearance panel, you still have that Perspective and Orthographic, but I switch back and forth quite frequently, so I like to have it here on this toolbar. Finally, you have the Visual Styles. Visual Styles allow you to quickly look at your model in different formats. For example, right now, we're looking at the Shaded view, but we might also want to look at it in a wireframe with hidden edges, or maybe even a wireframe with visible edges only. It depends on your need. Each of these will come in handy at different times. Here, we have a sketch illustration, and below that, you have a technical illustration that would be great for an assembly manual, for example. I'm going to return to the Shaded view, and then we can look at the full navigation wheel. The full navigation wheel is a pretty unique tool. It essentially brings all those tools together in a single-user interface component. Zoom allows you to left-click and push away from you while holding the mouse button to zoom out, or pull towards you to zoom in, Orbit allows you to do a free orbit, Pan allows you to pan the model. and the one I really wanted to show is the Rewind tool. The Rewind tool allows Inventor to remember the previous views you've used and just move your cursor along that to change back to a previously viewed scene. For example, if I wanted to zoom in on this part again, and I knew that was a very unique place, I can always use the rewind tool to get there, and when I'm finished, I can click the x in the corner to complete the command, and I can click the Home View. And now we can look at some of the shortcuts. The shortcuts are very simple. We have Pan, Zoom, and Orbit. Panning can be done by pressing and holding the middle mouse button and dragging your cursor while the button is down. Orbit can be done by holding the Shift key down on the keyboard, then pressing it and holding the middle mouse button as if you were going to do a pan, but this time, with the Shift key down, you'll actually get an orbit. And then, finally, you have Zoom, which, if you scroll the on the mouse away from you, will zoom out. And if you scroll the wheel towards you, it will zoom in. You're most frequently going to use the shortcuts just because they're a little bit easier, and it keeps you from having to travel your mouse all the way back to the navigation bar all the time.

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