Transparently enter 3D Orbit in 2007

One of the nicest new features of 2007 is the ease with which you can change your viewpoint using a poorly-documented keyboard shortcut for 3D Orbit. Press and hold Shift and press your mouse’s wheel (or middle button) to temporarily and transparently enter 3D Orbit.

While doing this, use that wheel to drag in any direction and your viewpoint changes. When you’re done, just release the Shift key and mouse wheel.

This is so fast and easy, you won’t believe that you once entered a 3D Orbit mode, changed your viewpoint and then exited. No more entering and exiting. Just use the keyboard combination and change your viewpoint. You’ll find yourself doing this many times as you work, completely intuitively.

Even better, you can still use the trick of selecting an object to orbit just that object. This is a great technique when you have a large drawing but want to focus on one object.

This little keyboard shortcut ranks up there as one of my favorite 2007 features.