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More easily enable CAD-like view mode

Gregory Vernon on 13 Jul 2024 (Edited on 13 Jul 2024)
Latest activity Edit by Gregory Vernon on 13 Jul 2024

Something that had bothered me ever since I became an FEA analyst (2012) was the apparent inability of the "camera" in Matlab's 3D plot to function like the "cameras" in CAD/CAE packages.
For instance, load the ForearmLink.stl model that ships with the PDE Toolbox in Matlab and ParaView and try rotating the model.
clear
close all
gm = importGeometry( "ForearmLink.stl" );
pdegplot(gm)
To provide talking points, here's a YouTube video I recorded.
Things to observe:
  1. Note that I cant seem to rotate continuously around the x-axis. It appears to only support rotations from [0, 360] as opposed to [-inf, inf]. So, for example, if I'm looking in the Y+ direction and rotate around X so that I'm looking at the Z- direction, and then want to look in the Y- direction, I can't simply keep rotating around the X axis... instead have to rotate 180 degrees around the Z axis and then around the X axis. I'm not aware of any data visualization applications (e.g., ParaView, VisIt, EnSight) or CAD/CAE tools with such an interaction.
  2. Note that at the 50 second mark, I set a view in ParaView: looking in the [X-, Y-, Z-] direction with Y+ up. Try as I might in Matlab, I'm unable to achieve that same view perspective.
Today I discovered that if one turns on the Camera Toolbar from the View menubar, then clicks the Orbit Camera icon, then the No Principal Axis icon:
That then it acts in the manner I've long desired. Oh, and also, for the interested, it is programmatically available: https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/cameratoolbar.html
I might humbly propose this mode either be made more discoverable, similar to the little interaction widgets that pop up in figures:
Or maybe use the middle-mouse button to temporarily use this mode (a mouse setting in, e.g., Abaqus/CAE).

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