Often when moving, rotating, or scaling objects you need to switch between various different coordinate systems local, world, screen, and so on. How many times have you wished that the coordinate system would just stick to what it is set to no matter what transform operation is selected? Well I recently came across a little known user preference that solves that very problem.

First let's describe the default workflow.

The user chooses a coordinate system, then chooses whether to move, rotate or scale. Each transform (move, rotate and scale) remembers its own setting. Therefore it will change the coordinate system back to its last setting. So the user must remember to select the transform first before setting the coordinate system.

How to setup the alternate workflow.

Open the Customize/Preferences dialog…

next check “Constant” under the ref coordinate system option…

and that's it! Turning that on will sync the coordinate system setting across all command tools (so changing from View to Screen in Move mode will change it in Rotate and Scale mode as well).

Shane Griffith

discreet
application engineer