The Find The Needle reverse belt direction is one key: press F6 while drawing a belt and it flips the belt you are placing. For a belt you have already built, break the run into separate sections and reverse the one section you need instead of rebuilding the line. Snapping itself is toggled with F, which switches No Snap Mode on so you can place belts freely.
Key bindings for belts and rotation
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| F6 | Reverses the belt you are drawing |
| F9 | Makes a new belt follow adjacent conveyors at horizontal angles and through connected bends |
| F | Toggles No Snap Mode |
| R (held, mouse moved horizontally) | Free rotation |
| R (tapped) | The original stepped rotation |
| R (held while aiming at an existing empty machine) | Rotates that machine in place; left-click confirms, right-click cancels |
F9 is the one that saves the most time on a big layout: it lets you continue a route at a new angle instead of restarting it. Where those controls fit into a whole build is in factory layout and the first production line.
Find The Needle reverse belt direction: one section at a time
Belt direction is changed per section, not per line. Breaking a long run into separate sections lets you change the moving direction of one particular belt without backtracking the whole line, which saves rebuilding a route just to flip one corner.
Check the arrows on every segment as you go. A belt pointing the wrong way is one of the most common reasons a line appears to be running but delivers nothing.
Snapping, No Snap Mode, and what it does not fix
Since Demo V8 the conveyor system has been reworked: conveyors snap much more easily and have automatic pathfinding, and the conveyor at the Hay Sell Stand snaps to the stand as well. F switches snapping off entirely, which is useful when the game keeps catching on connections you did not want.
Free placement does not guarantee a connection. Two rules keep that from wasting an hour:
- Test the actual flow of material through a short segment before you extend the line.
- Do not assume that placing the end of a belt next to another machine connects them. Being adjacent is not the same as being connected — check the placement prompts and the mode indicator.
When a lane needs to fan out into parallel paths rather than run straight, that is what U-Splitters and U-Joiners are for.