Tech Tip: Minimize Scrolling, Maximize Productivity in Onshape

Scrolling is common when interacting with anything digital, though it can often feel imprecise and take time while modeling. Here are some ways to minimize time spent scrolling and maximize your productivity:

Switching Views With Shortcuts

When switching in and out of close-up work, press “w”, then select an area to zoom into by dragging a selection box. Press “f” to zoom to fit the entire model.

Viewing a model from various perspectives is easy with either the View Cube at the top right or pressing Shift + 1-7. Going a step further, press Shift + "v" to set up named views, letting you save different perspectives to toggle while modeling, creating drawings, exploded views, demonstrations, and more:

Dynamic Dimensioning

When interacting with UI inputs, such as variable configurations, sketch dimensions, extrudes, mate offsets, and more, adjust values by scrolling while the input is highlighted for quicker value adjustments. Hold shift while scrolling to increase or decrease the value in larger (coarse) increments, and hold CTRL to increase or decrease the value in smaller (fine) increments. This is useful in preliminary design work where values aren’t yet locked in.

Screen Real Estate

With CAD, your efficiency depends on content awareness. Ensure you are working in fullscreen mode with bookmarks hidden to maximize the screen real estate usable for modeling. Also, adjust your browser zoom to scale UI elements down:

For more shortcuts, check out the complete list in the Help menu or find more productivity tricks by looking at more Onshape Tech Tips.