Right click to flyover?

[Peter S]

Hi everyone, new VW user here. Unfortunately finding the very simple act of orbiting (flyover?) to be very cumbersome to activate. (Shift+c or click scroll wheel + control button) A two handed action to orbit? Coming from Rhino where you simply right click and move the mouse. Am I missing something?

[Benson Shaw]

@Peter S - welcome to Vectorworks and the forum! To aide trouble shooting please  add a signature to your posts showing your vwx version and module plus your hardware and OS version. Add this via your Forum account > account settings> signature.

 

Some things about rotating the view in vwx:

• A scroll wheel click doesn’t work for me either. My fingers just won’t do that. 
• Shift c is one handed for me. Once the tool is active, mouse to the Mode Bar and pick the mode you want for center of rotation, eg center of selection, internal origin, or picked point (click to pick the point, THEN drag to 3d rotate).
• The floating tool palettes are helpful. Tap the Space Bar, and they appear at cursor. Hover the upper left one to open the floating Basic palette and click the Flyover icon (or any other tool you need). Then mode bar to choose the center.
• Also note that newer versions have that little view cube at lower left corner of the screen. Drag one of the cube corners to rotate the view.  Click the faces, corners or edges of the cube to realign the view, eg to Front, or Top, etc. 

While learning Vectorworks remember it is not a version of some other software. It has its own interface and development underpinnings. You will get the hang of it soon. This forum is typically very friendly and helpful. Also often sympathetic to complaints and criticisms. I encourage you to post as needed!
 

-B

 

 

[Tom W.]

On 2/28/2026 at 3:49 PM, Peter S said:

Hi everyone, new VW user here. Unfortunately finding the very simple act of orbiting (flyover?) to be very cumbersome to activate. (Shift+c or click scroll wheel + control button) A two handed action to orbit? Coming from Rhino where you simply right click and move the mouse. Am I missing something?

 

A good investment, at least until they started losing functionality a few versions back, was a 3Dconnexion Spacemouse which allowed you to flyover whenever you wanted with one hand + without changing the active tool.

 

Another thing you can do is change the keyboard shortcut for the Flyover tool to make invoking it slightly easier. I have it set to 1 as I never invoked the Text tool this way. You can change shortcuts by Ctrl-right clicking on the tool (or menu command for that matter).

[Kevin McAllister]

On 2/27/2026 at 6:49 PM, Peter S said:

Hi everyone, new VW user here. Unfortunately finding the very simple act of orbiting (flyover?) to be very cumbersome to activate. (Shift+c or click scroll wheel + control button) A two handed action to orbit? Coming from Rhino where you simply right click and move the mouse. Am I missing something?

 

Yup, the Vectorworks tool approach to navigation is cumbersome and outdated. Feel free to upvote my long time wish list item to have proper navigation built into the UI instead of being accessed through tools you activate. You can upvote here -

 

Kevin

 

[Christiaan]

On 2/28/2026 at 9:02 PM, Tom W. said:

A good investment, at least until they started losing functionality a few versions back, was a 3Dconnexion Spacemouse which allowed you to flyover whenever you wanted with one hand + without changing the active tool.

Do you keep your main mouse in one hand and use Spacemouse in the other Tom? I've got one but never trained myself to use it well. Even in my main hand I find it difficult to learn to use.

[Tom W.]

4 hours ago, Christiaan said:

Do you keep your main mouse in one hand and use Spacemouse in the other Tom? I've got one but never trained myself to use it well. Even in my main hand I find it difficult to learn to use.

 

Yes I have the spacemouse to the left of the keyboard + my cadmouse to the right (I'm right handed). It is the spacemouse wireless though, the small one, not the big one.

[EAlexander]

I've remapped Flyover to F in my workspace.

[Bluetones]

10 hours ago, Tom W. said:

 

Yes I have the spacemouse to the left of the keyboard + my cadmouse to the right (I'm right handed). It is the spacemouse wireless though, the small one, not the big one.

This what I do as well. I find myself lost when I "work from home" and don't have the SpaceMouse there.  😞

Otherwise, it's a great combo!

[Kevin McAllister]

The challenge with the Vectorworks tool based navigation is that it's outdated and so different from every other piece of software. I often find myself right clicking to try and flyover....

Everything else I use has added inherent navigation, even the simple slicing software we use for 3d printing or quickview in the Mac Finder.

 

Kevin