Push the knobs
The knobs all have convenient actions if you push them: pushing Vertical Position or Horizontal Position centers the trace vertically or horizontally. Pushing Tigger Level sets it to zero. Pushing Scale sets it to fine adjust mode.
Long Memory
If you don’t use Long Memory, you’re wasting most of the capacity of the oscilloscope. Long Memory stores 64 times as much data, so you can really zoom in on the waveform. To enable Long Memory, push the Acquire menu button, then select Mem Depth to set Long Mem. There’s additional documentation here.
Use zoom
Once you’ve recorded a waveform, you can pan across it using the horizontal position knob – the waveform window indicator at the very top of the screen shows where you are. In mid-range settings, however, the pan range is fairly limited (about a factor of 5) compared to how deep you can zoom with the horizontal scale knob (about a factor of 1000 with Long Memory). Note: zoom works best with Single triggering; if you use Auto or Norm triggering and hit Run/Stop, sometimes the detailed data isn’t in memory and zoom doesn’t show more than is on the display.
Pushing the Scale knob turns on the cool zoom mode, which lets you see the trace and a zoomed-in version at the same time, letting you zoom and pan.
Using the menus
Most of the menu buttons are in the group of 6 at the top. However, there’s also a trigger menu button under the trigger knob and a time base menu under the horizontal position knob. This is in addition to the four vertical menu buttons: CH1, CH2, MATH, and REF. Among other things, the time base menu lets you select X-Y mode.
The menus hide about 1/6 of the display, so close the menu when you’re done: push the round Menu On/Off button or push a menu button a second time.
Read More: Twelve tips for using the Rigol DS1052E Oscilloscope