Moving around the 3D view: mouse, trackpad and the view cube

The 3D view works with a mouse and with a laptop trackpad. Solid Vibes picks the right gestures for you, and you can switch any time.

With a mouse

Panning moves the whole view sideways without turning it. Zooming goes toward the cursor, so scroll over the detail you want to see.

With a trackpad

On a Mac the right button is awkward and a two-finger scroll is the natural way to move around, so trackpad mode makes scrolling pan instead of zoom.

Which mode am I in?

Solid Vibes notices a trackpad on its own. The first time you pinch, or scroll sideways (a mouse wheel can't do either), it switches to trackpad mode and tells you with a short message. It remembers your choice in this browser.

To choose yourself, press ⌘K (Ctrl + K on Windows and Linux) and type navigation:

• Navigation: mouse: the wheel zooms.
• Navigation: trackpad: two-finger scroll pans and pinch zooms.

Once you have picked one yourself, Solid Vibes stops guessing. Using a mouse with a laptop now and then? Pick Navigation: mouse, or keep trackpad mode and use pinch (or hold Ctrl and scroll) to zoom.

Flat view and perspective

Every 3D view in Solid Vibes opens as a flat (orthographic) view. Parts that are the same size look the same size, however far away they are, and parallel edges stay parallel. That is how a technical drawing works, so what you measure by eye is what you get. It applies to the editor, shared links and embeds, the History compare, the Make step's print plate and the layer preview, and the pictures Solid Vibes takes of your Thing for thumbnails and previews.

In a flat view, scrolling to zoom makes things bigger or smaller on screen; it doesn't move the camera closer, so you never end up "inside" the model.

Want the look of a camera lens, where far things shrink? Switch to perspective:

• Press O in the 3D view (press it again to go back).
• Or use the perspective button in the stack of buttons at the bottom right of the 3D view, or ⌘K and type perspective.
• In a shared link or an embed, open View and choose Switch to perspective.

Nothing is saved for the next visit: a new page or a new session always starts flat again. Sketch mode is always flat, and your choice comes back when you leave it. Render Studio has its own camera setting; see Render Studio.

In Sketch and Sculpt modes

Drawing and sculpting use the left button and Shift + drag (Sculpt uses it for box selection), so while you work in those modes, pan with the middle button, the right button, or a two-finger scroll in trackpad mode. Alt + drag orbits in sketch mode.

The view cube and the axes

The cube at the top right shows which way you are looking. Click a face to look straight at it (Top, Front, Right…), an edge to look at it from between two faces, or a corner for an angled view. The cube turns as you orbit.

The coloured X (red), Y (green) and Z (blue) axes start at the cube's lower corner and reach out past its edges, with a lettered dot at each end. They stay visible from any angle, even when you look straight along the ground and the cube shows only two faces. Z points up. When an axis points straight at you its dot sits next to the corner so you can still read it.

More room for the model

The Recipe and Parameters panels start folded into small pills of icons in the top corners, so the 3D view uses the whole width. Hover a pill to peek at its panel, or pin it to keep it open. Tool cards (the connection editor, the smoothness check, the Extrude or Cut forms…) float in the free part of the view, below the view cube and above the prompt bar, and you can drag them by their title out of your way. See Side panels and floating cards.

If the view won't respond

• If pan feels like zoom (or the other way round), you are in the other mode: press ⌘K and pick the one that matches your device.
• If a drag ever seems stuck (you let go of the button outside the window, say), click once in the 3D view. Solid Vibes lets go of a drag it lost track of by itself.
• In Sketch and Sculpt modes, a plain left drag belongs to the tool. Pan with the middle or right button or a two-finger scroll.

Next: Keyboard shortcuts and the command palette.