Centering "Find" in the screen?

[Travis]

I often use Find and F3 to find again. That is, I want to see when a variable is used and it is often on multiple views.

The current behavior of Vensim is to change the view and highlight the variable *somewhere* on the screen. I spend the next few second trying to find the variable. Often it is in one of the corners of my screen, sometimes obstructed by other windows.

And, since the variable is often barely on the edge of the screen, the first think I need to do is scroll the view so I can see the diagram and get model context -- a little laborious.

Could Vensim just put the variable of interest in the middle of the view? Or maybe center the variable in the view if it isn't already in the "Middle 9th" of the screen (by which I mean the middle box of a 3x3 grid)?

I think this is reasonable behavior because the Vensim knows the user's intent: The user wants to find and show a particular variable. And centering the variable would provide the surrounding context.

[tomfid]

I agree that this would be useful. Another issue is that the target is sometimes hidden, which means you get a blank selection box.

At present I suspect this would interfere with the scroll/zoom settings for views. I find that I'm often searching for a variable that appears on several views, and I wouldn't want to scroll 3 views before arriving at the desired instance.

With that in mind, another option might be to provide a quick/easy way to "zoom to selection" which would center the target and zoom to at least 75% if needed.

[Travis]

I was wondering about messing with scroll/zoom settings but I then thought that "the current system messes with it already." I might be wrong though.

If you're working in a model that has 20 views that are all Very Big at 100% (not fit on a screen), doesn't the current F3 Find behavior change the view settings as your bouncing around (assuming the variable of interest is off screen on different views)? I guess I'm sure how scrolling a view to put the variable at the edge of the screen is much different than scrolling the view to put the variable in the middle of the screen.

Zoom to Selection might be useful but it would be an extra step for the user. Again, I think the user intent with Find is really "Find and show me the variable". Then again, Zoom to Selection might be useful in general to center the part of the diagram you're working on. If that function existed, it could be used during Find operations automatically too.

Happy the conversation is going.

[tomfid]

You may be right, and it may depend whether zoom is set to "fit" or a definite value. I'll check.