Mouse sensitivity when building

[Senkiya Zsun]

Hello virtuosos

Here goes with my first ever question on this forum: is there a way to position prims with millimetre precision using the mouse? I have mouse sensitivity as far down as it will go (in the input preferences), but still a prim jumps far more millimetres than I want even with the slightest of mouse movements.
This has been an irritation to me for years and I get the feeling I should be doing something "Doh!" like holding a key down while moving the mouse to get the granularity I need. I know I can use keyboard input to set positions exactly, but I lose so much time trying to fathom out my orientation when doing that.

And if there is a way to do what I want, how do I get the control arrows/circles back into the frame when I'm working under the microscope?

And since I've got a head of steam up now, here's a third, related, question : is there a way to stop the view automatically swinging round when an adjustment takes my mouse near the edge of the screen (causing my prim to fly off randomly to any place but the one I want!).

Thank you (kisses you all for sparing your time).

[Ruuh Cassini]

Try using the emerald viewer, it lets you enter the coordinates up to 100th of a millimetre if I remember correctly.  I know you were asking for mouse positioning, and not about entering numbers into the build/edit window, but as long as the job gets done what does it matter? 

[Cerise Sorbet]

Hi Senkiya, yes we can make the building grid work at 1 millimeter! On the editor Grid Options dialog we canot type in a Grid Unit smaller than 0.010 but that is only in that window. We can make it smaller in the debug settings.

1. Make your Advanced menu show with Ctrl+Alt+D or try Shift+Ctrl+Alt+D in Linux.
2. On the menu go to Advanced, Debug Settings...
3. Enter GridResolution in Debug Settings search box
4. type 0.001 in the value box.
5. Close the Debug Setings window, your grid works on millimeters now!

Regular SL client can take extra decimals in the edit box. It only  shows 3 decimal places but it uses the other ones you type. You do not have to use Emerald  to do that but it can be good if you like to see the extra digits.

There is a way to make the Grid Options window take small numbers too but you do not have to do it.  There is min_val in floater_build_options.xml and it works to change it to 0.001 from 0.01 but you do not have to change it, debug is good enough.

[Irene Muni]

Hi Senkiya.

The great Cerise's answer it is the same method I use. As Cerise says it is completely accurate for building. I don't use Emerald (really I don`t need "see" minimum numbers).

[Senkiya Zsun]

Hi Cerise and Irene

Thanks for the info about those settings. I can certainly make use of them, but unfortunately they don't seem to get me where I want to. So maybe I should explain more carefully what I am trying to do.

Imagine I'm putting two prims together whose exact coordinates I don't know in advance as this would require trigonometrical calculation (they are at crazy angles to each other and to the world in general). I'm talking mostly about big prims by the way, for houses and stuff.

I get them somewhere near where I want them to be then zoom in as close as I can to make the final adjustments. The problem is in doing so I lose those coloured arrows and circles that allow me to adjust positions and angles using the mouse, since they stay in the geometrical centre of the object I am moving and thus go out of the picture. So I have to do the final positioning by entering numbers - and knowing which number to adjust and in which direction is seldom inutitive.

If I zoom into the centre of the object, I can achieve 1mm or 0.05° movements quite easily - but then I can't see the corners I'm trying to mate up.

Or if I zoom out I can't see the corners closely enough to make the final adjustments, and what's more making 1mm adjustments becomes impossible as the slightest mouse movement causes quite a big movement in the prim.

 

So I guess the most useful thing for me would be able to have those arrows and circles where I can see them. I'm sure serial buiders don't have the same hassle I do lining things up.

[Cinnamon Lohner]

No.  Afraid that the position arrows stay in the center of the prim.  And as you pointed out, when working with megaprims, you cannot always see to the edges and see the center position at the same time. You really need to use the coordinate values to do final adjustments.

As a low prim builder, I work with megaprims all the time.  Here are a couple of things I do to make my life easier.   Never start building at angles if you can avoid it.  If you have terrain issues, put up a build platform to work from.  You can always rotate your build into place after the pieces are aligned properly.  Start with your pieces on whole number coordinates.  Since megaprim are fixed in size, calculations are fairly easy.   And buy a build rezzer.  I use Rez Faux myself but I'm sure there are other good ones out there.  That way you can build "with the grain", package your build without worrying about parts being too far to link and then move it into final position by just tweaking and twisting the rez box.

I also know there are prim alignment tools available and considered getting one at one time.  But by just taking more control over where and how I built, I found them unnecessary for the builds I do.

--Cinn

[Irene Muni]

Ups, sorry Senkiya, before I did not understand you.

I do not have anything to add to good explained by Cinnamon

[Saikiki Moriguchi]

hi idk if u are using a wireless mouse or not but if u are make sure that nothing is blocking ur usb insert from ur mouse....i have had some trouble like u mentioned too and after clearing everything that was in the way off my desk it cleared up...hope this helps

[Cerise Sorbet]

Senkiya, I sent to you a little building compass that helps me find my bearing in big objects.  I hope it can help you too!

[Lin Ochs]

Have you watched this video?

Very helpfull

[Senkiya Zsun]

Thanks for all your suggestions and the time you pu tin to answer them. Its seems the best I can do is use the methods you suggest to ease the pain a little as there is no correct answer.

Cerise's compass sounds really useful and I'll be checking that out IW.

The video pointed to in the link made things very clear regarding the methods that are indeed possible.

I second the advice on starting builds on whole numbers and with all the parts straight. It's a principle I usually try to stick to, but when building something like a Japanese roof you can appreciate there are a lot of different angles involved. The best way round that problem I've found is to always change the root prim to the one being mated to, then reorient the whole building so that prim is straight. As an added bonus, houses balanced on their corners (albeit temporaroly) look so cute.

[Senkiya Zsun]

Oh incidentally, no one touched on the third question, which admittedly is of lesser importance but can be a real annoyance at times:

"And since I've got a head of steam up now, here's a third, related, question : is there a way to stop the view automatically swinging round when an adjustment takes my mouse near the edge of the screen (causing my prim to fly off randomly to any place but the one I want!)."

[Katarina Malthus]

I usually don't gush, but I've had a certain mouse for awhile that was *made* for building in SL. The miracles, good tiding and hope that the navigator fails to deliver, the Razer naga delivers in spades. Variable dpi higher than you'll ever possibly want to go (I use it on my leg during plane flights @ 65% max sensitivity and a twitch moves across the entire screen) and the ability to dial it down 6 ways to sunday on the fly. On top of this, it's an 18 button mouse, with a 12 button keypad immediately available on your left thumb. I've mapped it to all the v2 build shortcuts, ctrl, shft and alt; I only have to use the keyboard to enter names, and the sensitivity is beyond belief.

Couple it with a low grid setting as recommended previously and it'll be the best mouse you've ever used.

http://store.razerzone.com/store/razerusa/en_US/pd/productID.169418900/parentCategoryID.35208800/categoryId.37466100