Orbiting the Camera in AutoCAD 2015 with C#

Question

I'm writing a static class which contains methods to simplify working with AutoCAD's camera. All my methods seem to work except for orbit. Heres my orbit method in the context of my class

public static class CameraMethods
    {
        #region _variables and Properties
        private static Document _activeDocument = Autodesk.AutoCAD.ApplicationServices.Application.DocumentManager.MdiActiveDocument;
        private static Database _database = _activeDocument.Database;
        private static Editor _editor = _activeDocument.Editor;
        private static ViewTableRecord _initialView = _editor.GetCurrentView();
        private static ViewTableRecord _activeViewTableRecord = (ViewTableRecord)_initialView.Clone();
        #endregion

/// <summary>
        /// Orbit the angle around a passed axis
        /// </summary>
        public static void Orbit(Vector3d axis, Angle angle)
        {
            // Adjust the ViewTableRecord
            //var oldDirection = _activeViewTableRecord.ViewDirection;
            _activeViewTableRecord.ViewDirection = _activeViewTableRecord.ViewDirection.TransformBy(Matrix3d.Rotation(angle.Radians, axis, Point3d.Origin));

            // Set it as the current view
            _editor.SetCurrentView(_activeViewTableRecord);
        }
}

The problem is that every time I call orbit it orbits based off the view from the previous time I orbited. For example, the first time I call orbit to orbit 45 degrees around the x axis it does what I'd expect it to. However, if I change the camera from within autocad then call that method again, it orbits as if I called it twice; 90 degrees over the X-axis. I need advice on how to fix that.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 24 '15 at 12:31

As the active document can change on AutoCAD (it's a MDI application), I would not recommend store those objects as STATIC like you're doing.

Instead, every call that depends on MdiActiveDocument should get all those variables on each command call. That may be the reason why you're getting this behaviour.

Orbiting the Camera in AutoCAD 2015 with C#

1 Answers1