Top bar

One bar across the top: the project, what you have done to it, and the way to everything else.

Project name and save status

Autosave runs a moment after every change. Live means a collaboration session is open.

The project's name is a menu: the way out of the project, and the drawers that belong to it.

Way out: The first rows go to the Projects page and to the Collab page. An admin also gets the roadmap and the console.
Levels and layers: Opens the dock's Lists tab on Layers & groups.
Versions and history: Named snapshots with their author, autosaves every 30 minutes of editing (the newest 48 kept), and this session's undo steps in plain words. Jump to any of them or save it as a version.
Restoring: Restoring a version saves the current state as a version first, so nothing is lost.
Project settings: What is set once per project: the display units (ft-in, m, cm, mm), the snap steps for position and rotation, and the performance overlay, which says what the 3D pane costs to draw.
Help links: Project settings also carries the documentation and shortcut links Help has. Hold Alt while you drag to ignore snapping.
Branches: The drawer that compares a branch with the project it came from and takes chosen changes back (see Branches under Concepts).
Branch: Copies the project as it is on screen into a new project of your own, and opens it.

Level

Which floor you are working on, beside the project's name, once there is more than one. It is the same select as the Lists tab's Layers & groups list, where a level is added, renamed and given its elevation.

Undo / Redo

Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z#

Every discrete edit is one step. A drag or a typed value counts as one.

Select and Pan

V / P#

The two tools that are always to hand: Select picks and drags things, Pan moves the view.

Where: At the head of the plan toolbar whenever the plan is on screen, and in the top bar in the 3D layout. Every other tool is a button in the dock's Add tab.
Space: Hold it to pan without switching tools.
Click: Opens the dock on the Selection tab to show what you clicked, except on Lists, which already shows it beside the list. A double-click opens Selection from anywhere.
Select gestures: Shift-drag keeps a move straight. Ctrl-drag draws a lasso. Ctrl-click on a wall or an arrow adds a joint. Double-click edits, and right-click opens the menu.
Escape: Cancels the shape being drawn, goes back to Select and clears the selection.

Plan · Split · 3D

Tab / Shift+Tab · Ctrl+1 / 2 / 3#

Which panes are open: the floorplan, the 3D view, or both side by side.

Split: Shows the floorplan and the 3D view side by side. Drag the divider between them.
Buttons: In the middle of the top bar.
Tab: Steps Plan to Split to 3D and back, and Shift+Tab steps the other way. It works wherever you clicked last, the dock's tabs and the top bar's buttons included.
In a field: Inside a field, an open menu or a dialog, Tab still moves focus.

Lens

Which department you are working in, beside Plan · Split · 3D: All, Set, Light, Camera or Blocking, each in its own color.

A lens is emphasis, never a filter. It may dim, reorder and collapse, and it never hides, disables or removes anything. Every inventory tab, dock tab, tool letter and palette row works in every lens.

Picking a lens

Inventory: That department's inventory tabs come first, and the inventory opens on the first of them.
Selection: The groups that department edits open.
Plan: The other departments' layers draw quietly. They still click, drag, export and search as before. Hovering one says which lens quieted it and that a click takes it anyway.
Lists: That department's list comes first on the Lists tab.
Hotbar: The hotbar named after the department shows, made empty the first time.
Camera: Also turns on the frame lines inside a camera's frame.

What a lens leaves alone

3D view: Never dims, because a DP judges the lit set in every lens.
Search: Ignores the lens. Ctrl+K and the inventory's own search find everything in every lens.
The project: The lens is this browser's, like the layout and the dock's height. A collaborator does not inherit it, a link does not carry it, and the project does not store it.
All: One click away, at the left of the strip.

Who this project is open to, in a drawer under the bar, beside the avatars of whoever has it open right now.

Members: Invite people by email with a role, or invite a member to one of your teams. Somebody added by address keeps that role, whatever a team of theirs gives.
Links: An expiring share link opens the project at its role, viewer or editor, to anyone holding it. Nobody needs an account: a guest gives a name and is let in.
Guests: The owner sees each guest under the link and can remove them. A guest editor can change the plan, but uploading files needs an account.
Teams: Opens the whole project to a team of yours at a role you pick, so everybody on it gets in without being added one at a time. It takes that access away again too.

Export

A drawer of what you want out of the project: pick a destination and only the rows that produce it show, each with a button.

A row's tooltip is the long version. The last export's result, with any warnings, is the column on the right. Searching the command palette for a format takes you to the row that holds it.

The 3D set

Unreal Engine bundle: The whole set, with its textures embedded or beside it, IES files and 1 m scale probes. The plugin turns it into real Unreal lights (candela, CCT), glass, tiled materials and SunSky.
ARRI LUKA: Fixture mapping for LUKA ships with the plugin but is not yet verified inside Unreal.
Photometric files: Modeled from published beam data, except where the maker publishes a file of its own.
Diffusion frames as lights: A lit frame exports as a rect light the size of its fabric, with its sheet masked so the beam behind it does not arrive twice. Unreal passes no light through a translucent surface.
Bounce boards: Always exported as geometry, and Lumen bounces them.
Datasmith: Written from community documentation and not yet verified inside Unreal.
glTF: Meters, Y-up, with glass and lights. In Unreal use File, Import Into Level.
USD: An ASCII stage in meters, Z-up, with UsdLux lights.
FBX: Converted on the server with Blender. Its lights come from the Unreal bundle.
USDZ: For AR Quick Look on an iPhone or iPad.

Pictures

Rendered views: Rendered through the 3D view with its lighting, sky and haze: what each placed camera sees, a top-down view and the four elevations.
The look: Each picture is drawn with the look its own camera implies, so the top-down PNG looks like the top view on screen and a camera PNG like looking through that camera, whatever mode you were in.

The plan

Plan sheet: The floorplan sheet and its settings, saved with the document: print or dark theme, specs, notes, camera table, lux layer, and rendered views as extra pages. Its first page shows in a column of its own.
Compact: Puts the first two views above the plan and any more on pages after it, with the lux map on the plan and the schedule and legend beside it where they fit.
Detailed: Gives a page each to the plan, every camera frame, each view and the lux map, with the legend and schedule on the plan's page.
Pages: A camera frame page renders through the 3D pane. The legend, schedule and equipment need the plan page. The equipment schedule groups grip, stands and set items by name.
Plot presets: Applying one replaces the sheet's style and plot pages and keeps its detail pages, views and title block. A saved preset works on any project.
Plot layers: Each plot layer can switch its labels too.
PDF: Vector, with the text still text. Every plot is the same plan at the same scale, and a typed scale holds. Download PDF gives one file, and a linked project files it.
MVR: The lighting plot as MVR 1.6 (My Virtual Rig): GDTF fixture references, the DMX patch and the set geometry. Unreal reads it with its DMX plugin.
Printable pages: The shot list followed by a plan per shot, and a plan per blocking position with its renders.
Block pages: A zip of SVG pages, one PDF, or Print: the plan with every path and mark, then a page per position with its lens and eye-level renders. Without the 3D pane the plan pages still come.

Lists

Fixture schedule: A CSV of the lights.
Gear list: A CSV of items, lights, cameras with lenses and sticks, and cables. Pick the kinds.
Shot list: A CSV of the shots.
Blackout patch: A CSV of fixture number, address, maker, type, footprint and mode for every patched light. Positions travel in the MVR, not this file.
Lux map: A CSV or a PNG. It counts the fixtures, plus daylight when daylight is on.

Import MVR, in the command palette, brings a lighting plot from Vectorworks, grandMA, Depence or Blackout in as lights, after you review its fixtures.

Search

Ctrl+K#

The command palette: find any tool, command, setting or thing in the project by name.

The app: Tools, commands, fixtures and materials by name, the dock tabs, and the sections that own a setting (shot list, DMX patch, sun).
The document: A light by its unit number or DMX address, a camera to watch or pilot, a saved shot.
Trade words: It knows the words the trade uses, so footcandles, distro, sticks and atmos all find something.

Help

This documentation, the keyboard shortcuts, the three-step tour, and the way to the mobile editor.

Presence and account

Who else has the project open right now, and your account menu, which leads to your Account and your Settings. The way back to Projects is the wordmark at the far left, and the Project menu's first row.