topic Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom in Installation & update

Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

furtonb — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 11:22:48 GMT

Hi,

The new ,,macOS friendly" navigation in AC22 result in conflict: when using a Magic Mouse/touchpad the default setting is set to "Pan; Alt/Option to Zoom (macOS recommended)". So with this setting, anytime I move the drawing and zoom while copying/rotating an object, each zoom results in toggling the "copy mode". This is extremely annoying, as it can happen in accidental copies, which makes proper modelling a pain.

How to reproduce:
1. Under Work Environment/User Preference Schemes/Input constraints and guides set the mouse wheel scrolling as follows:

2. Go to any view (e.g. floor plan, section, elevation, 3D, doesn't matter really) and place a piece of wall/line/fill/etc.
3. Press Cmd+D to move it, then zoom out (as is the plan was huge, and it is faster to locate to new position this way), pan, and zoom in, possibly multiple times as you would do when adjusting a view.
4. Notice the appearing/disappearing "+" icon next to the cursor.

I know it's not possible to customize these (otherwise very handy) shortcuts – pressing option or cmd+opt (alt or ctrl+alt) when dragging/rotating to move a single copy or as many as wanted, but this way drafting requires extra attention.

I really love the newborn smoothness of the 2D navigation, especially when working with a touchpad, but can something be done to resolve this conflict? Like assigning a different shortcut for duplicating feature, or making the non-customizable ones customizable.

Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

Daniel Kovacs — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 12:46:47 GMT

Hi,

Good point, and a well detailed description! Thank you!

If you know how alt works, this can actually be avoided easily I think (just pressing alt one more time before placing, if the plus sign is there).

But if someone doesn't know that you can drag a copy by pressing alt, I can see this being really annoying to some people, so I let the designers know about this, maybe they can come up with a solution for a future version.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Regards,

Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

furtonb — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 18:14:56 GMT

dkovacs wrote:
If you know how alt works, this can actually be avoided easily I think (just pressing alt one more time before placing, if the plus sign is there).

Yes, but it needs an unnecessary glance at the cursor – and yes, it can become second nature as I feel like I'm adapting already, but I don't feel like a should. It happened that I couldn't tell whether an element was moved or copied after placing and I had to navigate back to check. The main issue is the unwilling placing of model elements in a model, which is awkward.

Imagine this conversation:

- Hey John, did you place these 3432 columns 50m north of the building?
- No, I was editing them and moved them right back.
- Well, that's strange, as it's right there, since we doubled the amount of concrete in our schedules.
- ....

Usually I don't miss it that's true, but having a flaw like this in one of the most commonly used commands is unexpected.

I hope to see this fixed soon!

Thanks!

Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

James B — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 18:51:06 GMT

The keyboard modifier is the same as before in previous versions. I’m curious to know if this had been a problem (or noticeable) before as well?

Can you also confirm which device you are using? Mac Tackpad? Or Magic Mouse?

Thanks for your feedback.

Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

furtonb — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 03:42:02 GMT

James wrote:
The keyboard modifier is the same as before in previous versions.

Yes, I'm aware.

James wrote:
I’m curious to know if this had been a problem (or noticeable) before as well?

I'm not sure, because I was using it the other way around: two finger swipes to scroll (and MagicPrefs to emulate middle mouse to pan). I have the same issue with AC21 INT b5021, if the navigation is set to "use wheel to pan and alt+wheel to zoom" – I just wasn't using like this before, because it was much slower than "click and pan", right now the speed is around the same.

James wrote:
Can you also confirm which device you are using? Mac Tackpad? Or Magic Mouse?

I'm using both.

Thanks!

Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

Brad Elliott — Sat, 18 Aug 2018 22:06:14 GMT

My question is why is this called Mac OS Recommended? I find zooming in and out to be much faster than panning. I can't imagine an OS reason for this to be recommended.

Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

Ralph Wessel — Sun, 19 Aug 2018 11:42:43 GMT

Brad wrote:
My question is why is this called Mac OS Recommended?

The default for trackpad, magic mouse etc is for panning, with alt pressed for zoom (or pinch-zoom) almost universally for macOS software. ARCHICAD was previously an exception by defaulting to zoom. It's a huge relief to have ARCHICAD working the same way as everything else.

Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

Eduardo Rolon — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 01:15:18 GMT

Ralph wrote:

Brad wrote:
My question is why is this called Mac OS Recommended?
The default for trackpad, magic mouse etc is for panning, with alt pressed for zoom (or pinch-zoom) almost universally for macOS software. ARCHICAD was previously an exception by defaulting to zoom. It's a huge relief to have ARCHICAD working the same way as everything else.

Have not been able to get used to it.

Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

Ralph Wessel — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 11:35:52 GMT

ejrolon wrote:
Have not been able to get used to it.

I guess it depends on how many other application you use alongside ARCHICAD. Everything else I used, from graphics and photo-editing through to word-processing and spreadsheets defaulted to panning with the trackpad/magic mouse/etc, and relied on alt or cmd to switch to zooming. Consequently I'm finding the new default perfectly natural.

Re: Navigation and duplication conflict when pressing Alt/Option to zoom

Eduardo Rolon — Mon, 20 Aug 2018 11:44:52 GMT

I use a lot and somehow I always want AC to behave differently. Not saying that you are wrong.