One little known fact about graphics manipulation that we picked up recently has to do with the “Zoom to Selection” button shown below.

We’ve always known that this button will zoom the contents of the graphics window to fit the current selection (in blue) to fill the screen – an easy way to quickly zoom in on a particular place in the geometry.  What we didn’t know was that this function also sets a new center of rotation of the geometry centered on the current selection.  This updated center of rotation will stay active until the user clicks the “Zoom Extents” or the “Go to Default 3D View” buttons shown below to reset it.

For example, consider the relatively long and slender geometry of a muffler below.  The default center of rotation is in the center of the entire geometry, but you can easily switch the center of location to the near end of the muffler (location B).

This tip will be helpful if you desire to select a number of boundaries or other features close to the vicinity of location B.  If you’ve ever tried to rotate a large geometry a small amount when the center of rotation is far away from the region of interest you know what we are talking about!  It can be very frustrating!  Thanks to the COMSOL Developers for thinking of this and special thanks to Jeff Hiller who passed this tip along to us at the recent COMSOL Midwest Users Meeting.

Until next time...

Jeff & Kyle

Principals