Hi Miroslav,
Thanks for the well-thought-out and detailed feedback.
The main reason that we got rid of persistently visible global rotation angles is that their behavior is confusing. For one thing, the order in which the rotations are applied affects the final orientation of the model. Furthermore, because the rotations are applied one after the other, modifications in one of the fields can seem to behave incorrectly – for instance, changing the X angle value could seem to rotate the model in the Z axis, or some other difficult to visualize axis, depending on what is in Y and Z. One result of this was that some users (very understandably) complained when the tool behaved counter-intuitively.
Allowing only relative rotations in the fixed, global X, Y, and Z axes resolves this confusion, but introduces a different problem, namely that it can be hard to reproduce an orientation exactly. We are working on ways to improve this aspect of orienting a model. For now, the simplest workaround that I can think of is: If you have two models that you want to be oriented approximately the same way, you can reset both of their orientations, select both models at the same time, and apply the same sequence of transformations to them.
Any ideas about how to quantify a model’s global orientation using a persistent coordinate system are welcome.
I’ll make a mental note about your suggestion that we allow rotations in the local coordinate system of the model. It’s an interesting idea and technically no problem – the main questions would be whether it’s worth adding the complexity to the interface, and where in the UI such a feature would fit.
Andrey