Navigating and searching in the drawing viewer

The drawing viewer is where you inspect sheets, move through revisions, search drawing text, and work with markup.

Best for: Everyone with View drawings access · Outcome: Move through current plans without losing drawing or revision context.

Pan, zoom, and select

Use the Pan tool to move around the sheet and the Select tool to work with markup and pins.

On desktop, common shortcuts include:

• Space for Pan
• S for Select
• + and - to zoom
• Left and right arrow keys for previous and next sheet
• Cmd/Ctrl + O to open the sheet selector
• Cmd/Ctrl + F to open search

Your scroll-wheel behavior depends on your user setting. If the wheel zooms when you expected it to scroll, check that preference.

On touch devices, pinch to zoom and drag to pan. Keyboard shortcuts are not required. On phones, sheet and revision controls live in the bottom bar while Pan or Select is active. When you choose a markup or measurement tool, that space changes to tool controls; select Done to return to normal sheet navigation.

Constructable loads a quick preview first, then replaces it with detailed PDF tiles as needed. A brief change in sharpness while zooming is normal.

Move between sheets

Use the previous and next buttons, arrow keys, or mobile swipe controls to move through the current drawing order.

Open the sheet selector to:

• Browse thumbnails by discipline
• Filter by sheet number or title
• See starred sheets
• Replace the current sheet
• Open a sheet in a new tab
• Open Split View or an overlay where supported

If you entered the viewer with a drawing-tag filter active, the selector stays within that filtered set until you clear the filter.

Search drawing content

Viewer search looks at text extracted from drawing sheets, not just sheet titles.

You can:

1. Enter a term or phrase.
2. Use exact matching when wording matters.
3. Preview matching sheets.
4. Open a result and jump to its highlighted location.

Scanned or low-quality text may not be fully searchable. If a phrase is visible but does not return a result, try a shorter distinctive term or search by sheet number.

Follow sheet-number links

Constructable identifies many sheet references printed in the plans. Select a recognized reference to open the target sheet.

Links depend on readable drawing text and a matching sheet in the area. A reference may not link if the target sheet is unpublished, numbered differently, or was not recognized during processing.

On desktop, following a sheet link can open the referenced sheet alongside the current one. On mobile, it replaces the current sheet and adds the original sheet to the viewer's back history.

Hide markup temporarily

Use Hide Markup when you need a clean view of the underlying sheet. This only changes what you see—it does not delete or unpublish anything.

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