SiteView has five ways of showing a site, and you move around each of them differently. The mode you get depends on the capture you opened, and you can switch between the ones the capture supports.
The five modes
| Mode | What you are looking at | How you move |
|---|---|---|
| First-person | A 360° photo, standing at a waypoint | Drag to look around. Click a waypoint on the floor or on the plan inset to walk there. |
| Aerial 3D Doll | The level as a dollhouse | Drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, right-drag to pan. |
| Aerial 3D Mesh | The reconstructed mesh of the space | Same as Doll. |
| Drone 2D | The orthomosaic, flat, from above | Drag to pan, scroll to zoom. |
| Drone 3D | The drone model in three dimensions | Orbit, zoom, pan. |
The navigation gizmo
The compass-and-arrows control in the top-right of the viewport. It shows which way is north and which way you are facing; click a segment to turn, and click the centre to reset the view.
The plan inset
In every mode, the plan in the bottom-left shows the level you are on and where you are in it. It is usually faster to click a waypoint on the plan than to walk there through the capture.
Right-click in the viewport
The right-click menu is the fastest way to switch how you are looking at a place and to turn overlays on and off without opening Settings. What it contains depends on what you are looking at.
In a capture
- Navigate Back and Navigate Forward — move through the waypoints you have already visited.
- View Mode — 360° Tour, 3D Map, Combined.
- Layers — Pano Bubble, SpatialNotes, Work Areas, Measurements, and Reference Plans, which opens a submenu of the plans on this project.
In the 3D map
Navigation drops away — there are no waypoints to step between — and two model controls appear: Backface Culling and Axis Plane.
In a drone capture
The layer list changes to match the data: SpatialNotes, Measurements, Reference Plans, DSM, Orthomosaic and Flight Path in 2D; in 3D, Orthomosaic gives way to Backface Culling and Axis Plane. See Drone captures in SiteView.
The pattern is worth learning once: the menu offers the layers that exist here. If something you expect is missing from it, the project does not have that data — the same rule as the Settings panel.
Two 4.0 articles retired here
Navigation in Plan Viewer and Viewing Point Clouds in SiteView described surfaces that no longer exist as modes. Reference plans are a Settings category now, and point cloud is a render mode of the 3D map. Both are covered in Viewer settings.