Tutorials CadCraft help Reference
Mouse, trackpad and touch
How to zoom, pan, right-click and pick in CadCraft with a wheel mouse, a Mac or PC trackpad, or a touch screen, and what differs between browsers.
Written for CadCraft 0.3. The same help is inside the app: press F1.
CadCraft is designed for a mouse with a wheel. Everything also works with a trackpad, with a few habits to learn. Touch screens work for picking, with limits.
Wheel mouse
- Zoom: roll the wheel. The drawing zooms about the crosshair, so point at what you want to see.
- Pan: hold the wheel down and drag, or drag with the right button.
- Zoom to everything: double-click the wheel, or click Extents.
- Enter: right-click.
Trackpad
Mac
- Zoom: scroll with two fingers, up and down. Pinching also zooms in Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
- Right-click (Enter): click with two fingers. Turn on "Secondary click" in System Settings, then Trackpad, if it does nothing. Control-click may count as an ordinary click in CadCraft rather than a right-click, so use the two-finger click.
- Pan: there is no middle button. Zoom out with a two-finger scroll, point at the area you want, and zoom back in: zooming follows the crosshair, so this moves you across the drawing. You can also drag with a two-finger click held down (a right-button drag).
- Zoom to an area: click Window in the View group and click two corners.
Windows or Linux
- Zoom: scroll with two fingers, up and down.
- Right-click (Enter): click with two fingers, or click the lower-right corner of the touchpad, depending on your touchpad settings.
- Pan: there is usually no middle button. Zoom out with a two-finger scroll, point at the area you want, and zoom back in: zooming follows the crosshair, so this moves you across the drawing. You can also drag with the right button held down.
- Zoom to an area: click Window in the View group and click two corners.
Holding SpaceSpace and dragging does not pan in CadCraft: SpaceSpace is Enter.
Sideways two-finger scrolling does nothing; only up and down zooms.
Touch screens and tablets
CadCraft reads a finger as a mouse click:
- A tap picks a point or an object, or selects.
- Dragging a finger on empty space draws a selection box (left to right a window, right to left a crossing).
- Dragging a selected object's grip moves the grip.
What touch does not do yet:
- Pinch and two-finger gestures do not zoom or pan. Use Extents and Window in the View group, or type
Zand press ReturnEnter, then pick two corners. - There is no right-click. Use the ReturnEnter key on the on-screen or attached keyboard.
- There is no hover, so snap markers only show where your finger is.
Commands are typed, so a keyboard helps a lot. Tap the command line at the bottom to bring up the on-screen keyboard.
Touch
You are using a touch screen. For anything more than a quick look, an attached keyboard and a mouse or trackpad make CadCraft much easier to use.
Browsers
CadCraft works the same in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari, on Mac, Windows and Linux. The differences are small:
| Topic | What to know |
|---|---|
| Opening a DWG | Large drawings take a few seconds to read in every browser; the status line shows "Reading …" meanwhile |
| Downloads | Each browser decides where downloads go and whether to ask first; see Browsers and computers |
| Open to print | Opens the PDF in a new tab. If the browser blocks pop-ups, CadCraft downloads the PDF instead |
| F7 | Firefox may offer caret browsing; choose No |
| Leaving with unsaved changes | Every browser shows its own "Leave site?" question, which CadCraft cannot change |
Safari
In Safari, a PDF opened with Open to print may show in the tab without printing: use File, then Print.
Firefox
Firefox may ask what to do with each download. Choose to save the file, or change this once in Firefox's settings under Downloads.