Blender For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Zooming Has Its Limits

When working in Perspective view, you may notice that occasionally you can't zoom in on your scene as much as you'd like. This limitation is because you're zooming toward a center point, and you're very near it. You can take advantage of four workarounds:

• Place the 3D cursor at the location you'd like to zoom to and press Ctrl+Numpad Dot (.). This workaround centers the view on the 3D cursor and gives you a clearer target to zoom in on.
• Select the object that you want to zoom in on and press Numpad Dot (.). This workaround centers the view on that object's center point so that you can now use that as your zoom target.
• Try popping quickly into Orthographic view by pressing Numpad 5. Because Orthographic view has no perspective distortion, the way it zooms is somewhat different, which may give you a better angle.
• Enable the Auto Depth check box in the Interface section of User Preferences (Ctrl+Alt+U). Enabling this option tells Blender to dynamically change the point you're zooming in and avoid this problem altogether.