The editor toolbar

The custom-object editor opens over the whole app, replacing the van layout with its own scene and its own panels. Its toolbar reads New custom object (or Edit custom object when you re-opened a saved one), and carries: Undo and Redo, the perspective/orthographic toggle, Result, Reference, Measure, the session timer, the metric/imperial switch, Help, and finally Cancel and Save.

Most of that chrome is the same as the van editor’s and behaves identically - see Undo and redo, Metric and imperial and Camera and navigation. Two things are worth knowing before you start:

• The editor has its own undo history, separate from your van’s, and it covers what you do to the pieces: adding, moving, resizing, texturing, grouping, reordering and deleting them. The object’s name, category, weight, cost and thumbnail angle are not on that stack, so Undo will not take back a typed name.
• Your free session clock is paused for as long as you are in here, so building a component does not cost you build time.

On a narrow window the toolbar keeps only the title (shortened to New object / Edit object), Result and Undo/Redo. Save, Cancel and the perspective/orthographic toggle move into a ⋯ menu; the Reference figure, Measure, the session timer and the metric/imperial switch are dropped from that layout altogether, as is Help mode. Widen the window if you need one of them. The panels move off the sides and into three tabs along the bottom: Add for the ＋ Add primitive drawer, Pieces for the list and Properties for the Inspector.

You will only meet that layout by narrowing a window with the editor already open - the editor cannot be opened below 760 px at all (see Custom objects). Narrowing does not close it, deliberately: losing an unsaved object to a window resize would be worse than a cramped toolbar.

Show result

What it is. The toolbar button labelled Result, which becomes Edit while the result is showing.

What it does. Swaps the scene between the two things you need to see. In edit view each piece is drawn separately and colour-coded by what it does to the stack - solid for Add, translucent red for Subtract, translucent green for Intersect. In result view they are fused into the one solid you are actually building, exactly as it will look placed in the van.

Options and limits. Switching it on also swings the camera round to the angle your catalogue thumbnail is shot from, so you can check the card at the same time; orbiting afterwards is left alone, and the snap happens again the next time you switch it on. The result is spun by the thumbnail angle you set on the save card.

The separate pieces are not drawn while the result is up, so they carry no handles and you cannot click one to select it - but the Pieces list and the Inspector are still live. Whatever was selected when you switched over keeps its controls, and the fused shape re-cuts as you type, which is the neat way to dial in a hole: put the result up, then step the subtractor’s position until it lands.

Reference ghosts are the exception, deliberately: they stay drawn, so your alignment guides do not vanish at the moment you are checking the shape against them - and they stay fully live with it. A ghost can still be clicked to select it, and a selected one keeps its move and rotate handles, so you can nudge a guide into place against the finished shape without leaving the result view.

What it affects. What the scene draws. It changes nothing about the object.

Back to editing

What it is. The button on the card that appears in the top right of the view while the result is showing.

What it does. Returns you to the edit view, the same as pressing Result again.

Options and limits. The card is there because the result view has almost no other tell: the toolbar button is an icon swap, and a simple object can look much the same fused as it does in pieces. The first thing most people notice is that clicking a shape has stopped working, which reads as the editor having broken rather than as a view you are in - so the card names the view, says why nothing responds, and carries the way out.

It stays available even when your free session has expired, which the Result toggle itself does not: a view you cannot leave would be a worse place to be stranded than a locked design, and leaving it changes nothing.

What it affects. What the scene draws. Nothing about the object.

Measure

What it is. The ruler button on the toolbar.

What it does. Measures the straight-line distance between any two points on your build, and the gap along each axis separately.

Options and limits. Click once to set the start, once more to finish; the reading appears on the line and as a row in the panel, which takes over the right-hand dock while the mode is on. Points snap to nearby corners, edges and face centres, so lining a measurement up with a real feature does not depend on a steady hand. Escape drops a half-finished measurement, and a second press leaves the mode.

Only point-to-point is offered here, unlike the van’s ruler, which also measures the width, height and length across a space. Those three are defined by what stops them - a wall, a lining, the load floor - and there is no van in this editor, so “the width here” would have to mean the gap between two shapes you happened to place. That is a different question under the same name, so it is absent rather than misleading.

Measuring takes the click, so while it is on you cannot select or drag a piece. The Pieces list stays on screen but goes read-only - no selecting, grouping or switching a piece’s combine mode, though groups still fold open and shut - and ＋ Add primitive is hidden, so the shape cannot change under a half-taken measurement. Undo and Redo stay with the object rather than the measurements - a half-built shape is the thing you are more likely to want back - so clear a row with its own ✕, or the whole list with Clear all.

What it affects. Nothing. A measurement is a question about the object, not a part of it, and is not saved with it.

Reference figure

What it is. The toolbar button labelled Reference, which stays lit while it is on.

What it does. Stands a translucent human figure about 1.75 m tall beside your build, so you can see at a glance how big the thing you are making actually is.

Options and limits. It is a view aid and nothing more: the figure is never part of the object, it adds no weight or cost, and it is not saved with it. It stands clear of the build rather than on top of it, and moves as the build grows, so it does not get in your way.

Unlike most of the editor’s settings it is not reset when you close the editor - turn it on once and it is still on the next time you open one. It is dropped from the narrow-window toolbar.

Scale is the thing hardest to judge in an empty 3D scene, so it is worth turning on before you commit to a size: a 400 mm box looks much the same as a 900 mm one until there is a person beside it.

What it affects. What the scene draws. Nothing about the object.

More options

What it is. The ⋯ button on the toolbar.

What it does. Holds the actions that do not fit the bar.

Options and limits. On a normal desktop window there is nothing to hold, so the button is not shown at all. On a narrow window it carries Save, Cancel and the perspective/orthographic toggle - the three controls the slim bar drops.

Internal builds also use it for exporting and importing an object’s definition as JSON, which is how components get baked into the built-in catalogue. Those actions are absent from the public app.

What it affects. Nothing on its own.

Cancel

What it is. The ghost button beside Save.

What it does. Throws the draft away and returns you to your van.

Options and limits. There is no confirmation, and nothing you built in here is kept - not the pieces, not the ghosts, not the name or the weight you typed. When you are editing an object you had already saved, Cancel simply leaves it as it was; the copies of it in your van are untouched either way.

Your van is exactly where you left it. The editor never changes the design behind it - only Save does, and only by adding to the catalogue.

What it affects. The draft, which it discards.

Save

What it is. The primary button at the right-hand end, reading Save for a new object and Save changes when you are editing one.

What it does. Opens the save card: the object’s catalogue picture, its name and its bill of materials, all covered in Object properties. The card has its own Save at its foot, and that is the one that puts the object into this design’s catalogue and takes you back to the van, where you place it from the catalogue like any other component.

Options and limits. The toolbar button is greyed out only while the object has no build pieces - a reference ghost on its own is not an object. The card’s Save also needs a name, and says so under the button while the name field is empty; it stays off, with its own line, for an object with more than one model. Back to editing, or the card’s ✕, closes the card and keeps everything you typed in it. While the card is up the editor’s keyboard shortcuts stand down, so a stray Delete or Undo cannot change the pieces behind it.

Saving an object you re-opened for editing updates that one object, so every copy already placed in the van takes the new shape, and its new weight and cost unless you had overridden them on that copy. The name is the exception: a placed copy keeps the name it was placed under. See Edit for the two ways to get a genuinely separate variant instead.

Saving does not put the object in your reusable library - that is a separate step on its catalogue card, covered in My library.

What it affects. Nothing until the card’s own Save. That puts the object in this design’s catalogue, and changes every placed copy of it when you are editing an existing one. It is an edit of your design, so the van editor’s Undo can take it back.

Related

• The catalogue - where the editor is opened from, and where a saved object appears.
• Object properties - the save card, and the name, category, weight and cost Save carries with it.
• Sessions and limits - the clock that pauses in here.
• Measuring - the van’s ruler, which offers three more kinds of measurement.