Denmark
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Re: Several problem with using Sweet Home 3D
@puybaret
Maybe magnetism and align works differently the PC? On my Mac it works exactly as I described it. As for the zoom: The Mac mouse does not have a scrolling wheel. The magic mouse is really a combined mouse and trackpad - so the zoom function is not identical on Mac and PC. I have very hastily made a short video to demonstrate how magnetism, align and zoom actually works on the Mac.
France
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Re: Several problem with using Sweet Home 3D
George59, be aware that measures tolerance in buildings are quite high. In my own home, I discovered that some rooms weren't actually as rectangular as expected in the plan. So, drawing walls upon a fuzzy scanned image should probably give not so bad results!
So, how do you design a room with 1m long walls on all four sides, one of them is 30cm wide, the other one is 40cm, and the other two are 10cm wide each and at the end the inner size of the room is 1m x 1m and the auto display of the area shows 1m2?
Just edit the coordinates and thickness of the walls afterwards with their modification dialog. Not fun to do, but please keep in mind that the recommended and fastest way to create a plan with Sweet Home 3D is to import a background image, draw walls upon it, change their thickness, and finally draw the rooms.
About the selection color under Windows XP, check the selected Color scheme in Appearance tab of Windows Display properties (see also here). The blue default scheme doesn't give so dark color on my computer.
I do like the space bar + mouse click&hold way of dragging. Shift+ or Ctrl+ could have also be used since they don't have any function in the same situation, but it is there.
Sorry to say that, but you're wrong: Shift is used for multiple selection and Ctrl key is used for duplication. By the way, using the space bar to pan in the plan is found in some other 2D drawing software too.
For zooming with keyboard instead of Ctrl-k I'd recommend the widely known Ctrl-+ or Ctrl-- as it is used in Internet browsers like Firefox.
I never succeeded to may Ctrl-+ or Ctrl-- shortcuts work under Windows. Maybe I should try again. Note that even if I also prefer those shortcuts, they are not so easy to use on some foreign keyboards where the + key requires to press the Shift key.
what is your preferred OS, MAC or Windows?
I work under Mac OS X because I like it but before all, it allows me to test Sweet Home 3D under that system, Windows and Linux with only one computer.
Ceciliabr, magnetism and align is supposed to work the same way on all operating systems, even if shortcut keys are different. About the video, zooming with the Ctrl or cmd key doesn't give unpredictable results, it's just that zooming in or out won't change the origin of the plan. It could be programmed an other way, but I'm not sure it could be such a good idea. Keep in mind that the plan pane and its scroll bars work with a 2D logic, which is different from the 3D logic. The way you show how to align objects in your video is unfortunately not very realistic, because the need to align side by side the exact same objects 2 or more times doesn't happen so often. That doesn't remove the interest of the Furniture > Align side by side menu item (if it wasn't so interesting, I wouldn't have created a shortcut for it!) and I guess you demonstrate it this way to create faster the video, but when you need to align different kind of objects you can also drag and drop then directly side by side along a wall simply using the magnetism I described in my previous message.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
Hungary
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Re: Several problem with using Sweet Home 3D
hansmex, thanks for explaining the calculating method and letting me know that I wasn't the first one to notice this discrepancy.
So, drawing walls upon a fuzzy scanned image should probably give not so bad results!
Puybaret, I forgot to mention that the drawing I was talking about isn't an engineering drawing but some private party in the apartment building we live in and since he used thicker lines to indicate the main supporting walls, this drawing is kind of useless for me.
But what I decided to do instead is to draw the floor plan with the right size walls in Sketchup and save that as an image and use that in SH3D as a background image.
About the selection color under Windows XP, check the selected Color scheme in Appearance tab of Windows Display properties (see also here). The blue default scheme doesn't give so dark color on my computer.
Based on your instructions I did manage to change color in question to light, or sometimes it's called "baby" blue, it fixed my problem.
------------------------ (for those of you, who want to do the same change, here is the exact path if you have Windows XP:
right click on desktop then... Properties, Appearance, Advanced, under ITEM pick "Selected Items" there you can change the color "Color1" to your preferred color. ------------------------
I do like the space bar + mouse click&hold way of dragging. Shift+ or Ctrl+ could have also be used since they don't have any function in the same situation, but it is there.
Sorry to say that, but you're wrong: Shift is used for multiple selection and Ctrl key is used for duplication. By the way, using the space bar to pan in the plan is found in some other 2D drawing software too.
What I meant was, that when I want to move the canvas, I don't click on the object(s) to do that but anywhere on the canvas. Currently if I click on the canvas while holding the Shift or Ctrl key and try to drag the canvas, nothing happens, that's why I said, that those two keys don't have any function in this scenario. So, basically while the tool "Select object in plan" selected, you could also move the canvas or pan in plan with your mouse while holding down any of those two keys. Just an idea.
Note that even if I also prefer those shortcuts, they are not so easy to use on some foreign keyboards where the + key requires to press the Shift key.
You're right about this, it is the scenario with all laptops, so you can scrap that idea. If you could change the center of zooming to the current position of the mouse, it wouldn't even make sense to deal with the short cuts for zooming IMHO.
Basically this is a drawing program where the primary tool supposed to be the mouse and only those functions should need keyboard assistance that a mouse couldn't do by itself.
About functions of magnetism and align... both seem to do the same but with different items. Wouldn't it make sense to combine the two into one tool like "Snap To"? This is how it's done in Sketch up and don't recall every causing me any problem. (I know, that you might get sick sooner or later for me bringing up SketchUp so often, I do that not to piss you off but because that's one of the few graphics applications I use and am familiar with.)
So if and when the "Snap To" option is ON (with an ON/OFF icon on the tool bar), you could move any wall, or furniture with the mouse, when you approach another wall or furniture with it, it will just snap to it, if the stationery items happen to make up a corner then the furniture will snap to the corner if it's close enough to both. I could even imagine that there would be a preference in setting the strength of the snappiness in pixels. In a few (rare) questionable situations, you could just turn off the feature "Snap To" for those actions.
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Re: Several problem with using Sweet Home 3D
Ok, well, there is a bug that HAS been going on under Mac OSX for YEARS! While the CMD - works to zoom out, the CMD + DOES NOT WORK AT ALL for zooming in. I don't understand why either.
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Re: Several problem with using Sweet Home 3D
On my Mac, cmd + works without problem. What keyboard do you use (with/without numeric keypad, US, FR...)?
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
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Re: Several problem with using Sweet Home 3D
I have to jump in here. Please, do NOT, under any circumstances make the mouse wheel work as zoom, directly. Using with CTRL or CMD is more than adequate. Having the mouse wheel immediately zoom is irritating beyond belief.
Google do this with their Maps and it's so bad I have to keep a second mouse (without wheel) on my desk just to use Google Maps due to the very simple fact that the above is made worse when trying to use a mouse like Apple's Magic Mouse. When a developer mixes up SCROLL, ZOOM and PAN in this way that Google have, it's virtually unusable with a Magic Mouse. The slightest movement of your finger on the mouse's upper surface and you've gone from studying the layout of some minor roads to a map of the entire planet. And when you zoom back in again, hey, you're somewhere else entirely. China maybe. Brilliant.
Let's look at this historically.
What's the name of the wheel thing on a mouse? It's a SCROLL wheel and it should be used for SCROLLING, not some other fancy control that might be specific for just one or a few apps. Every app in some way needs to scroll and that is what the wheel is for and not to...
ZOOM, whose origin is of course the camera and it really should operate as such. If on a camera you ZOOM in and then out again, you will be back to the same point. That's ZOOMING and shouldn't be confused with PAN. Certainly it should NEVER be combined with any PAN action. This is something so many get wrong. ZOOMING in and out should not change the centre of the image being manipulated. So the reverse action should get you back to where you started. Apps should do what they say they are going to do. Use a SCROLL wheel and it should scroll. ZOOM in or out should do that and just that. No PANNING involved at all. There's another way to do that.
It is a fault of many developers that they assume they know what the user wants to do, when in truth they only actually know what they might want to do in those circumstances and don't have a hope in hell of getting it right for more than a very few users. An app needs to be consistent and not try and change the obvious.
Apple got this right from the start and in their Human Interface Guidelines, published many years ago, they exhorted the developer thus:-
"Consistency should be valued above idiosyncratic cleverness"
It's as true today as it was then, but sadly most developers (even Apple) seem to have forgotten this. Trying to misuse the SCROLL wheel, or a ZOOM function for something else is nothing if not an attempt at idiosyncratic cleverness and it must be abhorred.
Sorry, a bit of a rant, but it angers me when developers ignore such basic guidelines and end up making the app a PIA to use. So please leave the SCROLL wheel to just SCROLL in SH3D. Zoom ONLY when combined with a modifier key and also please ZOOM in and out centred on the visible image, so reversing any ZOOM will take you back to exactly as you were before. PLEASE.
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Re: Several problem with using Sweet Home 3D
@UKenGB
There's a nifty little free app called Magic Prefs that you might find handy when using the magic mouse. I doesn't solve the zooming issues, but it prevents you from "ending up in China" every time you touch the magic mouse, since it offers an option to turn of the horizontal scrolling. I have used this with SH3D for a long time, and it really makes life a lot easier.
As for developers general lack of understanding of what the users are expecting, I totally agree with you. But SH3D is FAR from being among the worst. When using programs like Poser Pro ( the worst) or After Effects ( still arrogantly using brackets for shortcuts in European versions ), I repeatedly get these questions in my head: "Does the developer really think this is what I want? Does ANYONE EVER want this?"
Yes, there's a BIG issue with the zoom in SH3D, but that's really the only major issue with this program, and you can find ways to deal with it.
I have a feeling that the zooming-issue is on the table and will be dealt with.
