Viewport & navigation

The viewport is the middle of the window, and it is the design itself: everything you place, draw, move and select happens here. The panels around it are views of the same thing, so a click on geometry and a click on the matching row are interchangeable.

The two views

The 2D / 3D pair at the right end of the toolbar switches between them and shows which one you are in. Tab switches too, from anywhere except a text field you are typing in, and View → 2D top-down / 3D orbit is the third way.

The 2D top-down view looks straight down at the design and draws each layer’s top face flat. It is the authoring view: the grid is square to it and every shape reads at true position and size.

The 3D orbit view draws the slabs with their depth, so a channel is a trench and a chamber has a floor. It is where you check what the layers add up to.

Each view keeps its own camera, so switching and switching back returns you to where you were. The grid is drawn under the design in 2D and on the active layer’s plane in 3D; its pitch and its snapping are in Settings.

Where a region holds more than one pocket, the flat view outlines each with a hairline. Two pockets are the same color and abut exactly, so without it they read as one area; a hole needs no line, because it is already a visible gap. See Regions & compartments.

Camera navigation

The camera is on the right and middle buttons and never the left, so it stays available in the middle of a gesture whatever tool is active.

Right-drag orbits in 3D and pans in 2D — a top-down view has nothing to rotate. Shift+right-drag pans in 3D, and middle-drag pans in either view. Which of the two a right-press starts is decided at the press, so pressing Shift mid-drag does not switch it.

Scroll zooms, centered on the cursor: the point under the pointer stays under it, and each notch pulls the pivot onto what you are zooming into.

A pan grabs the point under the cursor and holds it there. In 3D that needs a point to grab — a press on empty sky above the design has none, and the pan does not start.

F frames the camera on the selection, or on the whole design when nothing is selected. It is the way back after roaming with pan and zoom, and the recovery from an edge-on view.

The pointer readout

A chip beside the cursor names what is under it. A child reads label : kind. A pin reads its owner and its own name, mixer / out. A terminal the open component exposes adds → name after that, and a world port adds a ».

Hovering also lights the thing itself, and the row that names it in the inspector’s Body tab.

Hover is scoped to the active tool: it shows what a press would take, so it never promises an action the press will not make. Under Add point, Add component and Draw region nothing lights — the crosshair is the affordance. While you are drawing a region the chip carries what the release will make instead of what is under the cursor.

Selection

A left click selects the child under the cursor, and a click on empty space clears the selection.

Inside a region the click names the compartment you pointed at, hole included: the whole area inside a region’s outer ring answers to a click, not only the parts that are carved. A region holding a single compartment selects as the region itself.

Where two shapes lie under the cursor the nearer one wins, and between two at the same height the one on the active layer does. That is what makes a hole in an upper layer select what is under it rather than nothing.

Esc works down a ladder and takes the first rung that applies. It closes an open context menu; else it abandons the gesture you are drawing, keeping the tool so you can start again; else it returns a non-Select tool to Select. With nothing else to do it steps the selection out one tier — vertex, then compartment, then the child, then nothing — which is the way back out of a region a click took you into.

Handles and markers

Shape says what a marker is: a circle is a terminal you can connect to, a diamond is a placed component’s pivot, a square is a vertex you can edit, and an outlined triangle flags a design-rule violation (Problems). Hovering or selecting grows a marker and lightens it rather than recoloring it, since its color already says which layer it belongs to.

A channel’s or a region’s vertices become grabbable only while that child is selected. A press on one selects that vertex, and the inspector grows a section for it.

A selected placed component gets a box drawn around it. A channel or a region gets its own shape traced instead, and a point gets neither — so the box doubles as a cue for what kind of thing you selected.

The left-drag

Left-drag moves what is under the pointer. The press selects first, so what moves is what you pressed on and never what was selected before; a press that does not travel stays a plain click. The whole drag is one undo step, and so is a placement you position in the same press.

Shift locks the movement to one axis. The axis is the direction you travel after pressing it, and motion freezes until that is decided, so a constrained drag is exact from the first pixel. Ctrl inverts grid snapping for that one drag.

What travels depends on what you grabbed: a nested compartment moves within the shape containing it, welded compartments come along together, and a wall-bound point glides along the wall it rides rather than leaving it.

The context menu

A right-click opens the menu for whatever is under the cursor. It opens in the Select tool only, and only when the button did not travel — a right-drag is camera navigation, so the two never contend. Over something with nothing to offer, no menu opens.

The rows, by what you clicked:

• a channel’s body — Insert vertex here, Delete channel
• an interior vertex of a channel — Promote to point, Delete vertex
• a point — Expose as pin or Unexpose, Dissolve into channel, Delete point
• a placed component’s pin — Expose as pin or Unexpose
• a region’s fill — Insert vertex here, Delete region
• a vertex on a region’s ring — Delete vertex, and the delete for the compartment it belongs to (Delete compartment, Delete pocket or Delete hole)

Every one of these is an action the Inspector also offers, which is why the menu has no items of its own. A row the app would refuse stays visible and grayed with the reason in its tooltip — the same reason the inspector’s button gives.

Esc, a click on a row, a press outside the menu, or picking another tool closes it.

See also

• Toolbar & tools — what the left button does under each tool.
• Inspector — the panel the selection feeds.
• Layers — the active layer, visibility and the explode gap.
• Settings — the grid, snapping and the inactive-layer mute.
• Regions & compartments — compartments, welds and seams.
• Keyboard & mouse reference — every key and button in one table.