Controls

Moving the camera

Quarry uses a free-fly camera, like a creative-mode spectator.

Straight-on views

Perspective makes things further away smaller, which is what your eye expects but awkward when you are lining a build up: the far edge of a chunk never quite lines up with the near edge. Switch the camera to orthographic and parallel edges stay parallel — a chunk-aligned selection reads as a clean rectangle, and you can judge at a glance whether two walls are the same length.

The view presets take you to a canonical angle and frame your selection there in one action (the whole world's current view, if nothing is selected):

Every preset switches to orthographic, since that is what makes a straight-on view worth having. Hold Ctrl with a preset to go straight to the opposite face. All of them are in the command palette and are rebindable in the ? overlay, so you don't need a numpad.

In orthographic view the scroll wheel changes how much world fits on screen rather than flying you closer, and it stops when the frame reaches your view distance — past that there would be no loaded terrain to show. Walk Mode is always perspective; your projection comes back when you leave it.

The navigator in the corner is a north-up map of your surroundings, and its rim is also your compass: a cone shows which way you are facing, and clicking N / E / S / W turns you to that direction without moving you. Hover it for its buttons — hide, zoom, top-down view, and ⤢ for the full world map — or right-click it for the same options plus its size.

To cross a long distance, use the world map (N) and click where you want to be, or the navigator in the corner for somewhere closer — both fly you straight there. See World map and minimap for the full picture.

Building

Keyboard shortcuts

Every shortcut is listed in the in-app shortcuts overlay — press ? at any time to open it. That overlay is the authoritative, rebindable list: you can reassign any action there, and apply the one-click Axiom layout preset if you're used to that editor.

We deliberately don't reprint the full key list here — it would drift from your custom bindings. Press ? in the app for the live version.

Command palette

Press Ctrl/⌘+K anywhere — even while typing in a panel field — to open the command palette: one search box over everything Quarry can do. Type a few letters, pick with ↑/↓, run with Enter, dismiss with Esc.

It covers every tool, every dock section, the ☰ menu (import/export, themes, docs…), selection apply modes, the Orient/Snap/Waterlog toggles, view toggles, and undo/redo — each row shows the command's category and its current shortcut. Commands that don't apply at the moment (selection ops without a selection, world actions on the welcome screen) are hidden until they do.

If your query looks like a block instead — say granite — the palette offers Search blocks for "granite", which opens the block picker with the query pre-filled. The Ctrl+K binding is rebindable like any other shortcut.

Selecting & clipboard

The Select tool drags a box; the Magic wand selects every connected block of the same kind. Selection size (W × H × D) and block count show live at the bottom of the dock's Selection section.