Introduction to "States"
States let a single design hold several arrangements - a deployed awning, a bed folded away, a van set up for the night. This guide builds your first group and van states from scratch.
VanCAD is full of powerful features, and one of the main ones is the ability to set group and van states. A state is a saved configuration of an object in your van (states are limited to groups of items) - for example a bed being folded away or ready for sleeping, an awning retracted or deployed, or a table folded down or up. Object states can be configured together to form overall van states (e.g. parked or driving, sleeping or eating).
Imagine a folding bed design. In other editors you’d have to design it either folded away or deployed, but your van isn’t a static environment - things move. States let you flip between multiple different configurations of the same item. So you can configure your bed both with its Base state (the default of every item is called the “Base” state - for a bed, that might be the folded-away version) and other states like “Deployed”.
In this guide we’ll walk you through how to create your first object and van states.
Let’s get started
For this guide, we’ll create an awning on the van’s roof that can deploy its shade, then give the van a state that deploys it.
1. Load up a new van in the editor. Add the component Accessories -> Awning. It lands on the roof, running along the van. You’ll notice this object is spawned as a Group. It has two objects inside that group: the bar and the shade. You can’t see the shade yet, but that’s because it hasn’t been deployed - that’s what we’re going to set up.
2. Move the awning bar to the side of the roof, where you would typically see an awning positioned. You can resize its length to get it the right size for your van.
3. Now our awning has been positioned, we can set up the deployed state. Start by clicking the “+ Add” button in the awning group, next to its highlighted “Base” state.
4. We now have a new state called “State 1”. Double-click it to rename it - let’s call it “Deployed”. Press “Enter” after typing to save the name.
5. While we have this state chosen, and the awning group selected, a notice reminds us that we are editing that particular state. Any changes we make to the group or the objects inside it will only apply to this state - the base remains unchanged. Expand the awning group’s items by clicking the “>” arrow to the left of the name, so we can see “Awning Bar” and “Awning Shade”.
6. When you click on a group in the 3D view, it selects the entire group - clicking again keeps it selected as a whole, so a stray click can never pick up one part of it by mistake. To reach a single item, use the Object List: expand the group and click that item’s own row. Click “Awning Shade” in the list to select only that item - we then get a notice to say we are editing only the shade. (Here the shade is hidden inside the bar anyway, so the list is the only way to it. If you would rather click into a group in the 3D view as well, there is a Click into groups setting under Settings -> Editing.)
7. You can now see in the editor that only the shade within the bar is selected. We can change its size, position and rotation to give it a new configuration. For an awning, we want to resize the shade to be much larger. Drag the small square just past the tip of the arrow that points away from the van outwards to make the shade longer.
8. The shade is now longer, but an awning is normally angled slightly downward as well. Click the nav cube “Back” face to see the exact angle - orthographic view helps here. Then drag the arc (the curved handle facing you, between the two arrows) down slightly to give the awning a gentle downward angle.
9. Giving it an angle has caused the shade to float above the bar. We need to move it down slightly to put it back. Drag the vertical arrow down until it looks right again.
10. The shade is now in the right position for our “Deployed” state. Try clicking between “Base” and “Deployed” to see the awning flip between the two states.
11. Group states come together in a van state. A van state sets the state of every group at once for a specific van configuration - here that is just the awning, but in a full design the same click could also fold the bed away and stow the table. Van states live in the strip along the bottom of the 3D view. Click the “Van States” button there to open the menu, then press “+ New”.
12. Like group states, you can double-click the new “Van state 1” to give it a new name - let’s call it “Outside”. Press your “Enter” key to save the name.
13. We now need to configure this new van state. Click “Configure” to bring up the configuration menu. This lists the groups in our design, and we can choose which state each one uses in this van state. For our “Outside” state, we want the Awning in “Deployed”, so click that. (The van’s own cabin seats are listed too - they have no states of their own, so leave them on “Base”.) You can then click “Done” to finish.
We’re done!
That’s it! We now have a van state that sets up the outside of the van. Try flicking the van states at the bottom between “Base” and “Outside” - you’ll see the awning deploy and retract. Every group you give states to can join in, so you can use this feature to configure all sorts of parts of your van together.
If you are still finding your way around the editor, our guide to planning your camper van layout in 3D covers the placement toolkit these states are built on: moving, rotating and resizing components, snapping them flush to the van, and cutting them to fit.
We hope you found this guide helpful - check out the others, along with the in-app tutorials, to learn more about the powerful features of VanCAD!