I'll offer one stupid tip in the hopes someone can answer one stupid question! Stupid tip: if you want to uniformly scale something in the assembly room quickly, "group" it first, then it will only scale in ALL directions at once. Remember to ungroup when done. Stupid question: Sometimes in the shader room my preview window goes all wierd.. the perspective is all funny and the movement controls work in strange ways. Trying Reset Camera or Fit Object in View doesn't seem to help. Is there some way to get it out of this state? thanks Ed

if you want to uniformly scale something in the assembly room quickly... Hold down the shift key while you scale. This will do the same thing and avoids the need to group and then ungroup a single object.

Ed, Stupid Answer: The only thing that I've found that causes that is mapping infinite planes. I've also seen it happen with centerpoints that are far away from the actual midpoint of the model. I find this occurs when I build a whole model in vertex mode then try to split it up. I tend to do a LOT of vertex modelling and I see this frequently. When it happens I have two choices. Live with it, or save and reload. Not the answer you wanted to hear, I think, but an answer of sorts.... Ken src="http://market.renderosity.com/~carrara/emoticons/dork.gif">.zip

Two good answers! I did pretty well;-) Thanks all

When I want to uniformly scale something I change the value in the global scale parameter in the properties tray. Your grouping thing is a cool idea but not completely necessary. Nice tip. When I fuss with the preview window, I make sure the object I'm working on is selected. The centerpoint of the selected object is considered the "pivot" point the camera rotates around when changing the view. It's really discouraging sometimes but that's what I percieve how it works. When you know that's what's happening, you can understand what you're doing when dealing with the position controls. When my viewpoint gets so danged whacked I can't figure it anymore, I pull the plug, close and reload. Not elegant but it works and it isn't that bad. Ken has the same idea I have when things get nasty. -Kix

I have seen this as well, and my guess is that your zooming out, instead of tracking out your camera. If you zoom, the perspective gets wacky, kind of like a reverse wide angle lens. If you track your camera back, then the perspective should stay the same. So, use the 'E' key to track out, instead of the 'Z' key for zooming. Hope this helps! :>

I don't zoom this window but your idea makes me think maybe zooming in or out will help get things back to normal. Will give it a try..

I've also experienced strangeness in the shader preview with really large objects, or ones with wacked hot point locations. my solution is usually to track out really far, and use zoom to come back in. sometimes this solves the distortion of the geometry. like the others, sometimes a reloading of carrara is necessary.