I've noticed for maybe a month that certain operations seem to throw Shark's orbit/panning centroid "off kilter".

I think it's happening (it's random) when i modify meshes to become surfaces, or surfaces to solids. But, when it does happen, the middle-click panning action is not normal. The model acts as if there is a "black hole" or some distant gravity forcing it to refuse to swing with the mouse. It sticks, holds as if it is girding up for a massive leap, and then might spin or tilt or jump around unexpectedly and undesirably.

It sometimes is funny but at the wrong time it is exasperating. Zooming in an out doesn't always resolve the matter. Since my model is 570 or so feet long (around 168.6 meters), I tried turning on and off various layers as well as hiding and unhiding any and all geometry I could select or see. None of that stopped the "gravity well"...

I tried adding two long lines at the then-current zoom level. I think I was in an iso view, but the lines drew in planar, on XY. When I went to plan view, I could not see them. In front view, I could not see them. In ortho view, they appeared. I hit my shortcut key to zoom and the lines did not come into view. In front view with slight panning, the two long lines became visible.

I'm not sure if they are related, but if so, then maybe something internal is acting wonky enough to impact the draw and pan functions.

In the past week or so, it definitely seems to be something in the meshing or surfaces after some conversion. But, I may not experience it much since I may use the meshes less and less anyway.

They're pretty to look at, but add huge amounts of overhead to performance and file size. I end up re-creating them from the curves since the native VCP/Shark surfaces are more useful.

It still is quite emotionally painful that the beautiful, imported mesh cannot be used for cutting/limiting VCP surfaces and I cannot do much else without converting them. When they come from Freeship and PolyCAD, they look so neat. But, after converting them to surfaces, the facets are too numerous, and joining them is a drudgery. ACIS goes bonkers and often won't make proper solids. It would be nice if ACIS or some body had a tool or converter that Tim could add to VCP and Shark to do this conversion seamlessly without too many questions or Vulcan levels of logic and terminology, lol.

If it only adds $5 - $15 to the retail price, I think it would be worth it, even $25 more, just to avoid having a separate interface to deal with. The native meshes in PolyCAD and Freeship also are exactly the shape as created in those programs, but in VCP/Shark, the exact same angle/curve/coordinate values seem to not be 100% faithful in some cases.

Also, that might help eliminate the "Warp Factor 1" girding. Maybe some invisible points are created at random locations, making the model jump or wiggle when mouse-panned?

Siggghhhh.... It is not persistent -- it is only per-session that this elusive "workaround" does me any good.

Anyone know of an SLT v8 patch higher than 1003? Does it address problems some of us have had?

Thanks!