Side panels and floating cards: peek, pin, resize and move
The Recipe and Parameters panels fold into small pills in the corners of the 3D view, with badges for what's inside. Hover to peek, pin to keep them open, drag to resize, and move any floating card out of the way.
The Build page has a panel on each side of the 3D view:
- Left: the Recipe (your steps) and the Thing tree (pieces and connections).
- Right: Parameters, the Make list and Chat.
When you open a Thing, both panels are folded into small pills: a short column of icons in the top corners of the 3D view. The model gets the whole width and height.
What the icons tell you
The pills show what is inside a panel without opening it:
| Icon | Badge |
|---|---|
| Recipe | the number of steps, and a red dot when a step needs attention (it doesn't build) |
| Thing | the number of pieces, when there are two or more |
| Parameters | an orange dot when a parameter changed somewhere else since you last looked |
| Chat | a pulsing teal dot while the agent works, an orange dot for a reply you haven't seen |
| Comments | the number of open threads (only when the Thing has comments) |
A dot goes away once you open that tab. The same dots show on the tabs of a pinned panel.
Peek at a panel
Rest the pointer on a pill and the panel slides out beside it, over the 3D view. Nothing else moves. Move the pointer away and it folds back after a moment.
Click an icon on the pill to pick which tab you see, for example Chat on the right.
From the keyboard, press Tab until you reach a pill: the panel opens while the focus is in the pill or the panel. Use ↑ and ↓ to move along the pill and Enter to open a tab. Esc folds the panel away and puts you back on the pill.
Keep a panel open (pin)
Every panel has one pin: the last button in its header row, after the tabs. It is in the same place on both panels, whether the panel is floating or pinned. Its tooltip says Keep open beside the model.
- Pin: while the panel is open, click the pin. The panel stays where it is and becomes a normal column; the 3D view makes room for it. The pin turns orange and stands upright.
- Unpin: click the same pin again. The panel folds back into its pill straight away and the 3D view takes the room back.
You can also press [ for the left panel and ] for the right one, or press ⌘K and type pin. Press \ (backslash), or ⌘K → Collapse panels, to fold both back into their pills.
Solid Vibes remembers your pins on this computer, so the editor opens the way you left it. Only you pin a panel: a reply from the agent or a changed parameter never pins one, and never switches the tab of a panel you pinned.
Not the same as the pin: in the Chat tab, Dock chat keeps the conversation open under the Parameters tabs, inside the right panel. The pin keeps the whole panel open.
When a panel opens by itself
Sometimes a panel opens for a few seconds because there is something worth a look:
| What happens | What opens |
|---|---|
| The agent replies or asks you something | Chat, on the right (or the chat under the Parameters tabs, when it is docked there) |
| A parameter changes (the agent changed it, or you changed it somewhere else) | Parameters, with that row highlighted |
| You click a face or an edge of the model | the Recipe, scrolled to the step that made it |
| A step stops building | the Recipe, at that step |
| You open a connection, or finish a sketch or a sculpted shape | the Thing tree or the Recipe |
It floats over the view and folds away by itself after about 8 seconds. Move the pointer into it and it stays while you use it. A pinned panel keeps the tab you chose: it only highlights the row when that tab is showing, and a dot on the other tab tells you something changed there.
If your computer is set to reduce motion, panels appear without sliding.
Make a panel wider or narrower
Drag the inner edge of a panel, the edge next to the 3D view. The pointer turns into a double arrow. You can also click the edge and use the ← and → arrow keys. Double-click the edge to go back to the normal width.
The width is remembered for each side. A floating panel uses the same width. Panels can't get so wide that the model has no room left.
Floating cards
Some tools show a card over the 3D view: the connection editor, Join and Connect, Wiggle it, Fit check, Split, the smoothness check, the flowing-shape editor, and the forms for operations such as Extrude, Cut, Shell or Hole.
Cards always stay in the free part of the view: below the view cube and the pills, above the prompt bar and its toolbar, and left of the zoom buttons. With the panels folded, that is almost the whole view. If a card has more than fits, it scrolls. Look for the scrollbar along its right edge.
Move a card
- Drag its title bar. When you hover the title, a small grip appears at the top of the card.
- From the keyboard: press Tab to reach the title bar, then Alt + arrow keys to nudge it, or Alt + Shift + arrow keys for bigger steps.
- Put it back: double-click the title bar, or press Alt + Backspace.
Each kind of card remembers where you put it, so the connection editor opens where you left it last time. Cards never jump around when you select something else. If the free space gets smaller, for example when you pin a panel, the card stays inside it.
The chat never scrolls sideways
Long words, links, file names and numbers in the chat wrap onto the next line. Code in a reply keeps its lines and scrolls sideways inside its own box, so the panel itself never needs a sideways scrollbar.
Smaller windows
The panels show on windows about as wide as a tablet held sideways (the left one) or a small laptop (the right one). On narrower windows they stay hidden, as before.
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