Viewports

The majority of the 3DS application window is taken up by viewports. The viewports give you different views into your scene.

You can change the general layout of the viewports by clicking on the little triangle on the left hand side of the window. It will also create a ribbon of button that allows you to switch layout with a click.

If there is more than one viewport on your screen, the active viewport is the one that is highlighted in yellow.

To expand the active viewport to be the only view port, you can hit alt-w. To go back to the layout you were using, hit alt-w again.

view styles

Each viewport can view the scene with a different style of camera. The first is a perspective camera. The other is an orthographic camera.

A perspective camera views the scene with a depth. That is objects that are closer to the viewer will appear bigger even if their actual size is the same when it is measured.

An orthographic camera looks at the objects in the scene without depth. That is regardless of the distance of the object to the viewer the object is exactly the same size visually. This type of view is great for ensuring that things are lined up properly as they are not subject to skewing due to distance. Orthographic cameras can also be pointed so that they look at the world directly from the top, bottom, left, right, front or back.

Aside from viewing the world through orthographic and perspective cameras, the objects in the scene can also be viewed with or without edges showing, as well as being a solid shape or a mesh.

This can be chosen in the drop down menu in each viewport as well as through hotkeys.