Am I right saying that there is no way to lock (the rotation of) the 3D View?
And if so, why is that?
In Quad View I can lock the View to Front, Left, Top etc, but I found no way of doing that to the single 3D View.
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You could add a camera and lock its rotation, but I don’t know of a way to just lock the viewport rotation itself.
Moved from “General Forums > Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support > Basics & Interface”
There’s not a “simple” lock button for the 3D View, but there’s a pretty easy workaround (as alluded to by SterlingRoth). In short:
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Enable the Lock Camera to View feature (N region > View panel).
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Select your camera and add a Limit Rotation Constraint to it
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Copy the camera’s current coordinates to the Minimum and Maximum X, Y, and Z values in the Constraint (make sure to enable the Limit checkboxes for each axis)
And that should pretty much do it for you… for any arbitrary view angle.
In fact, it wouldn’t be too difficult to make a quick and dirty add-on to give you this feature.
That’s a very helpful trick, thanks guys!
I am aiming for a fixed top view so I set the cam to ortho and also lock the z-location.
Any ideas how to get rid of the orange dotted box? Hiding the cam is not helping, neither do any of the other cam settings.
And sorry for posting in the wrong place 
what do you want to do with that ?
normally you already have front top side view!
view is made to work at different point of view not to a fixed angle 3D
happy bl
I just remembered that the step with the constraint isn’t necessary because the rotation locks are already available in the N region. Sorry for overlooking that. So it’s even easier than I’d written. 
The easiest (also kind of hacky) way to do this would be to temporarily disable the Lock Camera to View check box, scroll/zoom in on the 3D View until the camera edges aren’t visible, and then re-enable Lock Camera to View.
What I am trying to do is use two 3D views, one for “normal” use (changing perspectives while working) and one fixed in a ortho top view (like the one Quad View) to edit 2D curves in that plain, without accidentally rotating into perspective.
When I use Quad view the 4 windows are a bit small, so I hoped to set up a “dual view” situation with similar locking. I have two screens and often use 2 (or even 3) 3D Views
I had already found out the hacky way of loosing the cam edges, but that is, well, kinda hacky 
Blender is so great in configurability of its interface, that I am a bit surprised that this cannot be done, at least not as easy as in Quad View. But its not that big a deal either.
Thanx for the input!
another way you can always use cursor in view and Ctrl Arrow up down !
and use the keyboard 4 6 8 2 ect
I use this often and it is faster then using the quad view!
happy bl
I did a little looking into this. It turns out that the Python API actually already provides you with the ability to do this. It’s just not exposed in the UI.
So I wrote a little add-on that remedies that particular problem. Enable the add-on and there will be a check box labeled “Lock View Rotation” at the bottom of the View panel of the 3D View’s Properties region (the one that shows when you press N).
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Wow!! This is absolutely fabulous!
Thank you so much Fweeb!
This is not only exactly what I needed, it is also an extra motivation to start investing time in
python scripting in the (hopefully not to far future.
Thanx again, man!
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