Skip to content

View Tools (View Sketch, View Section, Grid, Snap, Rendering Order)

In one sentence: A set of display helpers that control how a sketch and its environment are shown while you are in sketch edit mode — they affect only the view, never the geometry or constraints.

Overview

Workbench: Sketcher · Menu: Sketch → View / Sketch Display
Toolbar: Sketcher view toolbar · Shortcut: see table

These tools do not create or modify sketch geometry. They exist to make it easier to see what you are doing while editing.

Tool Shortcut What it does
View Sketch none Re-centre and orient the camera so the sketch plane fills the view
View Section none Toggle a cutting plane that clips geometry above the sketch plane so solid faces do not obscure the sketch
Grid none Toggle the background grid and set its spacing
Snap none Toggle snapping of the cursor to grid intersections and special geometry points
Rendering Order none Control the draw order of sketch elements relative to 3-D geometry

Intuition

These tools exist because sketching in 3-D space has a visibility problem: the solid your sketch is attached to can block the sketch edges, the camera angle can make the sketch look like an ellipse instead of a circle, and freehand cursor placement is imprecise without grid guidance.

None of these tools touch geometry or constraints. They are pure view aids:

  • View Sketch snaps you back to the face-on camera angle whenever you accidentally orbit the model and lose the 2-D perspective.
  • View Section clips away the solid above the sketch plane so thick faces cannot hide what you are drawing.
  • Grid / Snap bring drafting-table precision — snap points align to a configurable pitch so short distances are easy to enter without typing.
  • Rendering Order resolves z-fighting when sketch lines sit exactly on a solid face and flicker between foreground and background.

Think of this group as your sketch workspace setup: configure it once at the start of a sketching session and forget about it.

View Sketch

Menu: Sketch → View Sketch

Rotates and zooms the camera so that it looks directly down the sketch's normal axis — i.e. you see the sketch face-on, exactly as it appears in 2-D. Use this whenever the camera has drifted from the sketch plane.

When to use it

  • You tumbled the 3-D view and lost track of the sketch orientation.
  • You want to take a straight-on measurement in the viewport.
  • You are about to select overlapping geometry and need a face-on view to pick correctly.

View Section

Menu: Sketch → View Section

Toggles a clipping plane aligned with the sketch. When active, geometry above the sketch plane (on the far side from the camera) is hidden, leaving only the sketch layer and geometry behind it visible. This prevents solid faces from obscuring fine sketch geometry on interior faces.

When to use it

  • You are sketching on a recessed face deep inside a solid and the outer walls block the view.
  • You need to see construction geometry on a face that a solid overlaps.

Grid

Menu: Sketch → Grid

Toggles the sketch grid overlay and opens a settings panel where you can configure:

Setting Description
Grid auto spacing Automatically adjusts grid density as you zoom
Grid spacing Manual grid cell size in mm when auto-spacing is off
Grid lines Number of lines / divisions

The grid is visual only — it does not constrain geometry unless Snap to Grid is also enabled.

Snap

Menu: Sketch → Snap

Toggles cursor snapping behaviour. When enabled, the cursor snaps to:

  • Grid intersections (if the grid is visible and Snap to Grid is on)
  • Endpoints and midpoints of existing geometry
  • The sketch origin
  • Intersection points of visible edges

Snapping is useful for rough geometry placement but should not replace formal constraints — never rely on a "snapped" vertex instead of a Coincident constraint, because snapped positions are approximate.

Snap is not a substitute for constraints

Vertices that appear to be coincident because they snapped together are often separate points. Use Validate Sketch to detect these gaps, or explicitly apply a Coincident constraint.

Rendering Order

Menu: Sketch → Rendering Order

Controls whether sketch elements are drawn on top of or behind the 3-D solid geometry in the viewport. Useful when geometry elements are visually obscured by solid faces even when View Section is off.

Python API

View tools affect the Gui layer only and are not exposed via the Python scripting API. They have no effect in headless / console mode.

See also