Window & panels
The window is one fixed frame. The menu bar runs across the top; under it the left panel, the viewport and the inspector sit side by side; the toolbar spans the viewport above and the status bar below. Nothing in that frame opens, closes or resizes itself as you work — every panel and every zone inside one is always there, and only a drag moves a boundary. The one row that ever arrives on its own is the update banner, at the foot of this page.
The menu bar
The full width of the window, above everything else: File, Design, Edit, View and Help. The document commands sit here rather than on the toolbar because they act on the whole design, not on what the next click does; View switches between the 2D and 3D views, and Help opens this guide and the About box. See Menus & files.
The left panel
A pinned strip over three zones, each scrolling its own content.
The strip is the quick settings — Grid, Snap, and the gear that opens the Settings window. It is pinned so no amount of content below can push it out of reach; the rest of the preferences live behind the gear (Settings).
Under it, in order: the browser zone, tabbed Components and Libraries, listing the components you can open and place (Components & Libraries); the Layers zone, which carries the stack picker, the base layer, the explode slider and one row per layer (Layers); and the Problems zone, the live design-rule report (Problems).
The viewport
The middle of the window, showing the design in 2D top-down or 3D orbit view (Viewport & navigation). The toolbar above it holds the tools and the options for whichever tool is active (Toolbar & tools). Both the toolbar and the status bar span the viewport only — the two side panels keep their full height.
The inspector
The right-hand panel, and where you edit: a pinned header naming the open component, over a tabbed zone for the component and an always-present zone for the selection inside it. See Inspector.
The status bar
A single line under the viewport, read while you work.
At the left is the legend: the current view mode, what the next click and drag do with the
active tool, and the navigation keys. It is composed fresh each frame, so it tracks the tool
you pick and the gesture you are in the middle of. Beside it, a finished action leaves a
short note (3 files written to …) that clears itself after a few seconds.
At the right end sit two readouts. ⚠ N library warnings appears when the last file you
opened had something to report about its libraries, and ✕ N ⚠ M counts the outstanding
design-rule errors and warnings whenever the report is not clean. Hover either one for the
details. Neither is a button — the Problems zone is the list you click.
Boundaries and sizes
Both side panels resize from their inner edge, and the boundary between two zones is a drag handle: the pointer becomes a vertical resize arrow over it, and the line lights as you hover and again as you drag.
Each panel has a minimum width, below which its rows would clip rather than reflow, and the viewport has one of its own. So dragging a panel wider stops where the viewport would fall below that floor, and shrinking the window past what all three need takes the space from the viewport first — the panels keep their rows intact. Zones behave the same way vertically: on a window too short for every zone’s minimum they all shrink together, and none is dropped.
What you drag to is kept. Both widths and every zone height are stored with your other preferences, so the next launch opens on the layout you left (Settings). A width a smaller window cannot honour is clamped for as long as that window is small, never overwritten — the layout you set on a wide screen is still there when you return to one.
Windows and dialogs
The Settings window and the two fabrication editors — Fab processes and Stack — float over the layout, are dragged by their title bar, and close from their own ✕. They are not modal: the design stays editable underneath.
The export dialog, the unsaved-changes question, the file-error report and the About box are modal. Each dims the window behind it and takes every click until you answer it.
The update banner
When the update check finds a newer release, a row appears under the menu bar naming the version, carrying a Download link and a ✕. It is the one part of the frame that arrives on its own, and a row rather than a dialog because a release is never urgent enough to interrupt an edit.
The ✕ dismisses that release and only that one — the release after it announces itself again. The check that raises the banner, and its off switch, are Settings → Updates.
See also
- Keyboard & mouse reference — every shortcut the status bar hints at, in one table.