Viewport & navigation

The viewport is the middle of the window. 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 starter sample in the 3D orbit view, the two layers held 800 µm apart by the explode gap

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 view you draw in. Nothing is foreshortened, so two shapes of the same size look the same size wherever they sit in the view.

The 3D orbit view draws each shape with its depth: a channel stands as a bar, a chamber as a pad. What is drawn is the void — the material around it is not, and a wireframe box marks how far the active layer’s slab reaches.

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, which is what tells two abutting pockets apart. A hole needs no line. See Regions & compartments.

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

Right-drag orbits in 3D and pans in 2D. Shift+right-drag pans in 3D, and middle-drag pans in either view.

Scroll zooms, centered on the cursor: the point under the pointer stays under it.

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 also how you recover from an edge-on view.

The scale bar

The scale bar is a ruler in the viewport’s bottom-left corner, with the distance it spans written above it. It is always on and does not follow the Grid switch.

The scale bar over the grid, spanning 500 µm

It always spans a round figure — 5 µm, 500 µm, 2 mm. It reads in mm from a millimetre up; every other length in the app stays in microns.

In the 3D orbit view the bar is true at its own corner rather than across the whole viewport, since a tilted camera draws the far side of the design smaller than the near side.

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 compartment reads its region and its own name, chamber / hole 1 : hole. A terminal the open component exposes adds → name after that once its pin name differs from the terminal’s own, and a world port adds a » either way.

The chip reading res : Chamber beside the pointer, over the lit chamber

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

Hover follows the active tool and shows what a press would take. Under Add point, Add component and Draw region nothing lights, and the crosshair is the only cue. 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, so a click inside a hole in an upper layer selects that hole and not the shape you can see through it. Between two at the same height the one on the active layer wins.

Esc does the first of these 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.

Handles and markers

Shape says what a marker is:

a circle is a terminal you can connect to;
a diamond is a child’s position — a placed component, a region or a channel;
a square is a vertex you can edit;
an outlined triangle flags a design-rule violation (Problems).

A child that has geometry shows its diamond only while you hover or select it; a point, which has none, shows its circle always. Hovering or selecting grows a marker and lightens it. The hue says what kind of marker it is, not which layer it is on; a terminal on an inactive layer is muted with its layer.

A terminal offering more than one layer draws a circle on each, joined by a vertical stem. One offering all layers has no particular run to draw, so it draws a single circle carrying a double-headed vertical arrow instead.

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.

Openings

Where the network reaches the outside or changes slab, Experiware draws the hole that gets it there: a cylinder on the bore’s axis, one per slab the hole goes through, spanning that slab’s full thickness. Explode the stack (Layers) to see them separately — each cylinder travels with its own slab, so the gap between them opens up like everything else. The stem through a terminal’s markers is what shows the connection across that gap.

They are drawn as narrow shafts by default, which keeps them from covering the channels they land on. Settings → Viewport → Openings switches to the true diameter or turns them off.

Two cases draw nothing. An opening with no material to remove — two channels on neighbouring slabs that already meet across the bond — is real and cuts nothing. And a terminal you marked as a world port but have not connected yet forms no opening at all, since there is nothing for it to open into.

A bore is not selectable. Clicking one selects whatever is under it; select the point that formed it to size its punch (Inspector).

The left-drag

Left-drag moves what is under the pointer. 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. 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 slides along the wall it rides and never leaves it.

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, since a right-drag is camera navigation. 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 on a nested compartment’s ring the delete for that compartment (Delete compartment, Delete pocket or Delete hole)

Each of these is an action the Inspector also offers, except Insert vertex here, whose other surface is the Insert vertex tool (Toolbar & tools). A row the app would refuse stays visible and grayed, with the reason in its tooltip.

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

Experiware Guide

The two views

Camera navigation