A first look

Experiware opens on a sample design rather than an empty window, so there is something to fly around and click before you have drawn anything. Nothing about it is special: it is an ordinary document, and File → New clears it away.

The Experiware window on the starter sample, in the 2D top-down view with nothing selected

The sample design

The sample is a droplet-microfluidics workflow, read left to right. A tee splits one sheath supply into two, which meet the dispersed phase at a flow-focusing junction; the droplet stream runs through a serpentine mixer and pours into a collection chamber. A second chamber sits on its own layer, connected to nothing — it is there so the design has two layers to look at.

Three of its connection points are open to the outside: the two inlets and the chamber’s outlet. The viewport draws each as a burst, so you can spot a port at a glance.

The starter sample in the 2D top-down view: the tee, the flow-focusing junction, the serpentine mixer and the collection chamber, the three world ports drawn as bursts, and the second chamber muted on its own layer

The title bar says Untitled — Experiware. The sample has never been on disk, so Save asks where to put it, exactly as it would for a new document.

The window

Five menus run across the top — File, Design, Edit, View and Help. Help → User Guide (F1) opens the guide you are reading.

The left panel stacks the quick settings strip over three sections: the Components and Libraries browser, the Layers list, and the Problems report. The viewport fills the middle, with the toolbar above it and the status bar below. The inspector is the right-hand panel, and it is where you edit.

Nothing in that frame opens or closes as you work. Every boundary is a drag handle, and where you drag it to is remembered. See Window & panels for each panel in turn.

The two views

Experiware opens in the 3D orbit view, where each shape is drawn with its depth — a channel stands as a bar, a chamber as a pad, and a wireframe box marks the slab they are cut into. Press Tab for the 2D top-down view. That is the view you draw in: it looks straight down, so nothing is foreshortened. Each view keeps its own camera, so Tab twice returns you to where you were.

The starter sample in the 3D orbit view, its shapes drawn with their depth

Right-drag orbits, scroll zooms on the cursor, and middle-drag (or Shift+right-drag) pans. Press F to frame the whole design again after roaming. See Viewport & navigation for every gesture.

The selection

Left-click a channel. It lights in the viewport, the inspector’s lower section fills with its detail, and the matching row scrolls into view in the inspector’s Body tab — the panel and the viewport are two views of one selection.

The channel res_in selected: lit in the viewport and named on a chip beside the cursor, its row highlighted in the inspector’s Body tab, and its detail filling the section below

Now click the collection chamber. The inspector fills with res, an instance of the Chamber component, and shows the parameters it was placed with — width, length, corner_radius. Most of the sample is placed components like this one, and the channels between them are drawn in place.

Esc clears the selection, and so does a click on empty space. Hovering names what is under the cursor on a small chip beside it. See Inspector for everything you can edit there.

The layers

The Layers section lists the sample’s two layers. Layer 0 is the active one: it is drawn in full color while the other is muted, and it is where a newly drawn shape would land. Clicking Layer 1 moves the emphasis and changes nothing in the design. Drag Explode and the layers separate along the stack axis, which is how you see a buried layer. See Layers for every control in it.

The Layers section: the stack and base-layer rows over the Explode slider, and the two layer rows with Layer 0 active

The Problems section

The Problems section is where the design-rule check reports. The check reruns after every edit, and the sample is clean, so the section reads no problems. Nothing here blocks you: a design with violations still builds and still exports, and you decide what to fix. See Problems for how a report reads.

Where to go next

Tutorial: your first chip — build a small design from an empty document.
Interface reference — every part of the app, one page each.
Concepts — the model underneath: components, channels, regions, layers and rules.
Keyboard & mouse reference — every key and button in one table.

Keyboard shortcuts

Experiware Guide