Navigate - Essential Skill Video

Learn how to open a view of the project and navigate to different areas of the model.

Why Understanding How to Navigate Views is Important

A project file is a 3D model of your building. The different views of the model are slices of the model showing a floor plan, elevation, section, or detail view. The Project Browser lists and provides navigation to the different views. To better understand the spatial relationships with objects, work with multiple open views of the model tiled.

Within a view, use the middle mouse button to zoom, pan, and orbit. The navigation controls at the right side of the drawing area, and the ViewCube in 3D views, offer alternate methods of navigating in the view.

Learning Objective

In this video, you will learn how to:

Use the mouse wheel to navigate in a view.
Use the ViewCube to navigate a 3D view.
Open views from the Project Browser.
Display open views in tiled windows.

Terms and Concepts

Term/Concept	Definition
View	Views of the model isolate a specific portion of the model so it can be more easily worked on. For example: A floor plan cuts a model a specified distance above a level datum. A section view cuts the model where the section line crosses model elements. An elevation view does not cut the model, but provides a plane where model elements are projected. A 3D view shows the model elements in an isometric or perspective view.
Project Browser	A navigational tool listing all of the views contained in the project. Double-clicking a view title opens the view in the drawing area. The Project Browser also lists all of the family content currently loaded in the project.
Tile	Tiled views of the project allow elements to be seen from multiple angles simultaneously. Using tiled views can help when designing in 3D space because the relationship can be more easily understood without the need to change from one view to another.
ViewCube	The ViewCube is a navigational tool to allow a quick way to orient a 3D view to a particular viewing angle.