In this video, we will examine the various ways of navigating different views in Chief Architect.
Views in Chief Architect are either two dimensional drawings or three
dimensional rendered views. In either 2D or 3D views,
many controls are rather similar. To start,
on the right side of the screen is a toolbar containing zoom tools.
The first of which, simply titled zoom,
allows you to draw a marquee box around a certain area that you want to zoom in on.
The next two buttons, zoom in and zoom out,
zoom the center of the active view in or out by a set amount.
The downside of using these as opposed to the zoom marquee is that it's more
difficult to control what exactly you're zooming in on.
The undo zoom button will revert the last zoom action taken as well as
the following two:
fill window and fill window building only.
Fill window will zoom the view so that literally anything visible in the drawing
will be fit within the screen.
Fill window building only does the same thing,
but restricts its scope to walls so that only structural components fit within
the viewable area, ignoring things like terrain, CAD objects, et cetera.
The last tool in the list is the pan tool.
Clicking this tool allows you to click and drag in the view to move the drawing,
allowing you to move around without needing to zoom out and back in again when
you need to work on another area that's off screen.
Note that the tool remains active only for a single pan action.
Once you release the mouse,
the pan tool is disengaged and must be clicked again if you want to pan again.
Double-clicking the pan tool locks it active until another tool is selected,
allowing you to pan as many times as you wish.
With no objects selected,
the arrow keys on your keyboard will also pan the view,
though be careful because when an object is selected,
the arrow keys will nudge that object one inch at a time.
Another way to pan is by using the scrollbars,
though they are turned off by default. Located in the view menu,
turning the scrollbars on places a bar on the right and bottom of every view,
allowing you to click and drag the bar to pan the view left and right or up and down.
These are off by default in order to give you more room in your views.
And because there's an easier way of panning, even easier than the pan tool.
It's recommended that you use a three button mouse with Chief Architect Software
One that not only has left and right buttons,
but also a scroll wheel.
Rolling the scroll wheel in most views will zoom in or out of that view based on
the location of your mouse. This is the best way to zoom.
You don't need to select a special tool in order for it to work. In fact,
you can zoom while using another tool and you have full control of where you're
zooming your view.
The scroll wheel itself is also a button.
Pressing the wheel down will activate the pan function,
allowing much more control over the view you are in.
Many of these controls are the same in 3D views.
The scroll wheel works the same for panning and zooming.
The zoom in and out buttons,
even the zoom marquee tool and undo zoom.
However, in a 3D view,
you have the ability to move and rotate the camera around the scene.
To make this easier, when entering a 3D view,
the default tool is set to the mouse orbit tool.
With this tool active, you'll see a four pointed arrow cursor,
and clicking and dragging within the view will rotate the camera about its focal point.
It's important to understand where the focal point is located and how it's determined.
When creating an overview camera the program will automatically determine the
center of the drawing and focus on it. When looking at the plan view,
you can see here that the dashed line indicating the camera's view direction
ends with a small plus mark in the middle of the plan. This is the focal point.
When creating a full camera,
you have to click and drag to create the camera and as such,
you're in control of where the camera is positioned as well as its focal point.
So when drawing out a full camera,
be sure the focal point is in a good location,
like the middle of a room that you wish to view at various angles or on an
object that you wish to look at.
The mouse pan tool works exactly the same as the pan tool,
as well as the middle mouse button.
Mouse dolly pushes the camera forward and back and swings it left and right.
Mouse tilt is essentially the opposite of the mouse orbit tool,
but where the mouse orbit tool rotates the camera about the focal point,
mouse tilt rotates the focal point about the camera.
This is more like if you were holding the camera and simply looking around.
The mouse tilt tool is great for small tight spaces,
or if you're having trouble getting something in view.
3D center on point and 3D focus on object are excellent ways to
regain control of the camera as they change the focal point to either a single
point or onto a specific object.
The 3D center on point tool allows you to click anywhere in the 3D view to
force that point to be the new focal point,
reverting you back to the previous tool.
This is best used in conjunction with the mouse orbit tool.
3D focus on object is very similar. However,
it not only focuses on the center of whatever object you select,
but also zooms up to it. Similar to when in plan view,
you can also move the camera using your keyboard.
The arrow keys move the camera forward, backward, and rotate left and right.
The F key moves the camera forward. B moves it back.
L and R move it left and right. U and D move it up and down.
And I and O pull in and out while maintaining the focal point.
Lastly, you can manually control various camera settings by opening the camera
specifications dialog while in the view by going to tools,
active view, edit active view,
or through the active view toolbar icons.
Also when selecting a camera in a plan view,
you can adjust the cameras location and focal point and open its specification
dialog by selecting the open object button located in the edit toolbar.