Hi all,
I'm not sure if I'm the only one find "rotate view" function in Staad Pro is really annoying. I could never get the intended view angle correctly by dragging mouse. In fact, the coordinates at the left down corner often go ridiculously wrong, as is shown below:
Below is the view when I click the "isometric view" button, which is correct. I have highlighted 3 beams in X,Y and Z direction for reference. Note that the node of V shape is pointing to the positive Z direction.
Now I start to rotate view by arbitrarily clicking the rotate view buttons, here's what I got:
So why on earth could this happen?
I found that in the "View of Y" (or "View of -Y"), the "rotate" and "spin" buttons actually do the same thing to the STRUCTURE VIEW but different things to the COORDINATES. "rotate" button will rotate the coordinates about Y axis while "spin" will rotate coordinates about Z axis, which I assume is correct. But both buttons will rotate the structure about Y axis!
Although this viewing problem seems not affecting the analysis result (so far), I don't think this is acceptable for a world-class 3D CAD software today.
Does anyone else experience the same problem? I'm using Staad Pro v8i release 20.07.04.12 on Windows 7. Please let me know if this bug is from Staad Pro or Windows or whatever reasons, and how can I get rid of this. Thank you in advance!
Here are some suggestions
1. You can use the left and right or Up and down arrow keys in the keyboard which would give better control.
2. Setting the center of rotation to an existing node may be helpful in some cases. You can do that using the last icon in the series of rotation icons in that same toolbar ( marked in purple in the figure below )
3. Generally when the structure is in the isometric view, using the rotate left and right ( marked in black in the figure below ) would allow rotation about the vertical Y.
4. On the other hand if you choose one of the elevations ( like say view from +Z as marked in orange in the figure below ) you would be able to rotate the structure about the global Z axis by using the set of icons marked in cyan and you would be able to rotate the structure about the global X axis by using the set of icons marked in green.
I hope this helps
Hi Sye,
New findings:
1. When I choose View from +-Z (orange box on your pic), and spin (blue box), the global coordinates are rotating fine, i.e. X and Y axis are always perpendicular and both goes around Z, which is a point.
2. When I choose View from +-X and spin, I would expect X and Y be always on the same line and both perpendicular to Z, which is a horizontal line now. However, in reality, Z is fixed but X and Y will not keep on the same line. It looks as if X-Y plane is not perpendicular to Z.
3. When View from +-Y and spin, it's the same as in case 2, X-Y plane is not perpendicular to Z.