The Zoom.-
Mg5 has a new Zoom-System totally new and prepared for easy and quick operation. As usual, there are two principal ways of using the zoom: one is trough the the use of the mouse and another is using the keyboard. Moreover, there are appreciable differences in both ways.
Using the mouse. Mg5 make use of the “scroll wheel” included in most of modern mouses to activate the zoom. The process is very simple: placing the pointer of the mouse in any place of the screen, just turning the wheel in the user direction will zoom the image of the screen. Every click of the wheel correspond to an increase of 25%. The vertical en horizontal rules that limit above and at left the drawing screen, will be auto adjusted, and the center of zooming will be the point where the mouse pointer has been placed. If the wheel is rotated in the opposite direction, the zoom will decrease until the original 1:1 scale is attained.
This allows to work very quickly when the standard scale is too small for certain, very detailed operations. Just placing the cursor near the “complicated site” and giving one quick rotation to the wheel above, the objects will increase their size. Not so the background grid, what allows to make movements much more precise using the snap-to-grid capability.
Nevertheless, there are two possible drawbacks when using this method. The first is related with the use of a mouse without an scrolling wheel. This one makes this method unavailable.
The second drawback is that when adjusting the amount of zoom used, if the mouse pointer is placed in another place as its original one, the focused part of the screen will change and the result will be unpredictable.
For that reason, a button has been provided, the last one of the vertical toolbar, that simply returns everything to its original state. So the process should be:
Place the mouse button over the point which neighborhood should be redrawn in detail. Without moving the cursor, rotate the wheel in or out until the scale obtained is satisfactory.
Make the adjustments needed on the objects and press the “no-zoom” button to come back to the original state.
The scale obtained with the zoom at every position will be shown in the small window at bottom of the screen, near the word “ZOOM”.
Using the keyboard.- When a mouse without wheel is used, there is an alternative way of using the zoom trough the keyboard. The zoom will be activated just pressing the “Z” key. Each time it is keyed, the zoom increases the scale by 25%. It having the Ctrl-Key pressed, the effect obtained pressing the “Z” key will be to decrease the scale in the same amount.
One point of big importance is the center point chosen as “zoom-center”. If no object is selected, this point will be the origin, so the (0,0) point, at upper left. The screen will increase its size going to the right and the bottom part and disappearing anything placed at right or at the bottom. This can be recovered with the scroll bars, but sometimes, if the scale chosen for zooming is not an small one, the operation can be difficult and with big scales, almost impossible.
For that reason a more friendly way of using the zoom with the keyboard is to select an object where the action of the zoom is wanted. Once done, all the operations before mentioned will use as center point the center of the selected object, so it will remain always visible, and no “crazy searchings” will be necessary.
As before, pressing the “No-zoom” button will change the screen to the original one.
Final remarks.- The action of the zoom is to increase/decrease the scale of everything on the screen with the sole exception of the grid. This has been maintained to allow a more precise placement of points. (With a zoom-scale of 2, a pixel movement will correspond to 0.125 mm. when returning to the original state.
The paper will be scaled in the same proportion, and also the text-size and any other items. For that reason, it has been decided to let a possibility open to non-scaling objects when using the zoom, as sometimes it can be useful. If a part of a drawing should be increased in size while maintaining the original size of the rest, all the objects which size should be maintained must be grouped. The zoom action does not affect objects grouped, and this is true both ways, when increasing sizes and when decreasing them.
Madrid, January 2006 |
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