The Object Viewer Vs. 3D Orbit

At first look the Object Viewer in Land Desktop and the standard 3D Orbit command in AutoCAD look very similar. Each command allows you to rotate, or orbit, around objects in 3 dimensional space. This is great for checking your design or examining surfaces to look for holes, spikes, or other errors. They also beat the heck out of the old DDVPOINT command. But this is where the similarities end.

The Object Viewer is typically faster than the 3D Orbit command because it allows you to select only the objects that you want to see in the viewer rather than orbiting around the entire drawing like you do with the 3D Orbit command. More importantly the Object Viewer does not affect your UCS, it doesn’t even change the current view of your drawing at all until you use the set view option. This is very important in Land Desktop because while in LDT you always need to be in the World coordinate system.

So if you haven’t been using it give the Object Viewer a try. You can find it in the Utilities pull-down in Land Desktop or just select the objects that you want to see in the Object Viewer and right-click to find an option to use the command.

Author

Rick Ellis, president of CADapult Software Solutions, Inc, has worked with and taught Autodesk Civil 3D, along with Map 3D and other Autodesk products since the mid-90s. He is the Author of several critically acclaimed books on Autodesk Civil 3D, AutoCAD Map 3D, Land Desktop and Carlson Software; including the Practical Guide series.

Rick continues to use Autodesk Civil 3D on projects in a production environment, in addition to teaching classes to organizations both large and small around the country, helping them get the most out of their design software investment.

This practical background and approach has made him an award winning speaker at Autodesk University and a sought after instructor by organizations around the world.