Tag Archives: ViewCube

AutoCAD 2009 – ViewCube problems?

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Having been very effusive in my praise of AutoCAD 2009’s ViewCube feature, stating among other things that “the ViewCube looks like a finished, polished tool”, I may need to backpedal. Those views, along with all of my 2009 Prequel posts, were based on my experience with the Release Candidate.  Although ViewCube was very stable for me in pre-release versions of 2009, I’ve seen severe ViewCube stability problems in the shipping software.

I’ve seen the following problems in just a few minutes use of the ViewCube, on two different PCs:

  • Picking the WCS button under the ViewCube and then picking a different visual style led to AutoCAD going into an endless loop where it kept flashing up and removing the WCS menu about twice a second. Ctrl-Alt-Del was needed to get out of this. This lock-up could be repeated by using the UCS button and picking in the drawing area to make the UCS menu go away.
  • In my attempts to reproduce this on another PC I couldn’t immediately do so, but by using the Home feature and changing visual styles I could make my cursor disappear so it looks like AutoCAD is locked up. No cursor was visible anywhere within the AutoCAD window (including crosshairs, pickbox and arrows), but the normal Windows cursor was visible outside AutoCAD. I could use the invisible AutoCAD cursor to highlight buttons and could therefore close AutoCAD without losing anything.

So, if you are using the shipping version of AutoCAD 2009, I suggest you save all drawings in your session before experimenting with the ViewCube. I would be interested in your experiences with the ViewCube. Is it reliable for you?

AutoCAD 2009 – The Prequel Part 13 – ViewCube

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For many 3D users of AutoCAD, the ViewCube is likely to be the most useful new thing in AutoCAD 2009. There are a couple of problems with it, at least in the Release Candidate:

  1. It does not work in 2D wireframe mode (which is, paradoxically, where 90% of my 3D work is done). You need to choose another visual style before it will appear.
  2. It seems to slow things down quite a lot in complex drawings.

That said, if you have more than enough computing power for the drawings you usually deal with, then this is a very, very nice interface addition. You can just pick intuitively on the various parts of the ViewCube and your view of the model changes accordingly. You can also click and drag on the cube, and it will move where you place it, while snapping on to the various 45 and 90 degree view directions when you get near them, in the same way that Polar snap works. There is a right-click menu with a bunch of useful options, including a quick and easy switch between parallel and perspective views.

Messing with the ViewCube

You can also easily switch between User Coordinate Systems using the little menu thing under the cube. Unlike some of AutoCAD 2009’s new user interface elements, the ViewCube looks like a finished, polished tool and provides a genuine boost to productivity. Beautiful.