Tutorials PartCraft help Reference
Trackpad, touch and small screens
How to turn, pan and zoom with a Mac or laptop trackpad, what works on a touch screen and what still needs a keyboard, and how the screen rearranges on a phone or narrow window.
Written for PartCraft 0.3. The same help is inside the app: press F1.
PartCraft is made for a mouse with a wheel and a middle button, but a trackpad works well once you know the gestures, and a touch screen works for looking at parts and simple sketching.
Trackpad
Mac
| To | Do this |
|---|---|
| Turn the part (3D) | Click and drag with one finger (or drag with three fingers, if you turned on three-finger drag) |
| Pan (3D) | Hold ⇧Shift (or ⌘) and click-drag, or click-drag with two fingers pressed (a secondary-click drag) |
| Turn the part, swiping | Swipe with two fingers; with ⇧Shift, the swipe pans. Needs Scrolling set to "Work it out" (the start) or "Trackpad" |
| Zoom (3D and sketch) | Pinch. Zoom goes toward the pointer. With Scrolling set to "Mouse wheel", a two-finger scroll zooms too |
| Right-click | Click with two fingers, or ⌃Ctrl+click |
| Pan in a sketch | Swipe with two fingers ("Work it out" or "Trackpad"), or click-drag with two fingers pressed. ⇧Shift+drag does not pan in a sketch (it draws a selection window) |
| Add to a selection in a sketch | ⇧Shift+click or ⌘+click |
Turn on secondary click in System Settings, Trackpad, Point & Click if two-finger click does nothing.
Windows or Linux
| To | Do this |
|---|---|
| Turn the part (3D) | Press the touchpad (or tap and hold) and drag |
| Pan (3D) | Hold ⇧Shift or ⌃Ctrl and drag, or drag with the right button area pressed |
| Turn the part, swiping | Swipe with two fingers; with ⇧Shift, the swipe pans. Needs Scrolling set to "Work it out" (the start) or "Trackpad" |
| Zoom (3D and sketch) | Pinch where the touchpad supports it. Zoom goes toward the pointer. With Scrolling set to "Mouse wheel", a two-finger scroll zooms |
| Right-click | Two-finger tap, or the lower-right corner of the touchpad |
| Pan in a sketch | Swipe with two fingers ("Work it out" or "Trackpad"), or drag with the right button area pressed. ⇧Shift+drag does not pan in a sketch |
| Add to a selection in a sketch | ⇧Shift+click or ⌃Ctrl+click |
Scrolling is in PartCraft settings: "Work it out" (the start) treats sideways or fine-grained scrolling as a trackpad, "Trackpad" always does, "Mouse wheel" never does. A pinch zooms in all three.
The arrow keys turn the 3D view and ⇧Shift with the arrows pans, once you have clicked in the view: handy on a trackpad. ++ and −− zoom.
Touch screens
PartCraft reads touch input, so tablets, touch laptops and phones work, with limits.
Touch
In the 3D view
- One finger: turn the part.
- Two fingers: pinch to zoom, move together to pan.
- Tap: pick a face, an edge or a plane. There is no hover highlight before you tap.
In a sketch
- Tap with a drawing tool to place each point: tap the start, then tap the end. Snapping happens where you lift your finger.
- Two fingers pinch and pan. Putting a second finger down cancels a drag the first finger began.
- To end a line chain, tap Line again (or another tool) in the toolbar.
- With Select, tap to select; drag a point or line to move it; drag on empty space for a window. There is no ⇧Shift on screen, so a second tap replaces the selection: drag a window round two items to select both.
- To change a dimension, use Edit beside it in the right panel.
Fillets, chamfers and shells
There is no ⇧Shift for picking several edges. Instead, choose Fillet, Chamfer or Shell with nothing picked: PartCraft goes into picking, and each tap on an edge or face adds or drops it. Tap Done when finished.
The drawing sheet
Tap to place and select symbols, and drag a symbol to move it. The sheet does not pinch-zoom or pan by touch in this build; it fits the screen when it opens.
What still needs a keyboard
- Selecting two separate items for a relation, unless a window can catch both. A Bluetooth or attached keyboard gives you ⇧Shift.
- Cancelling "Click a plane or a flat face to sketch on" (EscEsc): tap a plane or face to go ahead instead.
- Cancelling a joint you started (EscEsc): tap a part in the list on the left.
Small screens and phones
- At 1280 pixels or wider, the toolbar fits on one row.
- Between about 760 and 1100 pixels, the side panels get narrower.
- Below about 760 pixels (a phone, or a narrow window), the screen stacks: toolbar (swipe it sideways for more buttons), the 3D view, the status bar, then the properties panel and the history. Scroll the page to reach the panels.
- Menus (Export, Views) open across the width of the screen.
A phone is fine for opening a part, turning it and checking its facts. Real modeling needs a bigger screen and a mouse or trackpad.
Browsers
Current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari run PartCraft on Windows, macOS and Linux, and on tablets and phones, as long as WebGL and WebAssembly are available. See Browsers and computers.