View and workplane
Moving around the scene, looking straight on, and placing new shapes on any surface you like.
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Moving around
With the mouse:
| What you do | What happens |
|---|---|
| drag with the right button | rotate the view |
| click the right button | on a body, a menu with the most used commands: duplicate, hole or solid, group, hide, lock, delete and more; on empty space Paste and Select all |
| drag with the middle button | move the view |
| mouse wheel | zoom in and out |
| hold Ctrl and drag with the left button | also moves the view |
How fast the wheel zooms is set with «Velocità dello zoom» in the settings, under «Aspetto»: a slider from 1 to 14, 5 to begin with; above 10 only the wheel gets faster. One notch of a mouse wheel zooms alike in every browser, a trackpad zooms with how far you stroke.
On a tablet or phone, two fingers zoom (spread and pinch) and move the view (slide together). One finger on empty space turns the view, and a tap there clears the selection; on a shape or a handle it works on the design, just like the left mouse button. To turn the view with a finger that starts on a shape too, switch on «Ruota la vista con un dito» in the camera bar. That switch shows on devices with a touch screen.
A graphics tablet with a pen behaves like a mouse: the tip is the left button, the barrel button on the pen the right one, for turning the view and for the menu. The tablet's hotkeys can be set in its driver to layerling's keyboard shortcuts.
On a tablet, work with a stylus if you can. Its tip is far finer than a fingertip and does not cover what you aim at, so small points, thin lines and handles in a sketch, measuring points and edges are hit exactly, and longer work is less tiring. layerling already lets a finger reach a little further to points, lines, handles and edges than a mouse pointer does, but a stylus remains the more precise way. This holds for a pen that the tablet knows as a pen (an S Pen, an Apple Pencil and the like). A plain stylus with a rubber tip counts as a finger for the screen and is not finer than one.
There is no right mouse button on a tablet: hold a finger still on a shape or on empty space for half a second, and the menu opens that a right click opens, with Select all on empty space. Select multiple in the same menu stands in for Shift on a tablet: each tap on a body then adds it to the selection or takes it out again, until you tap empty space or press Esc; a finger on empty space still turns the view. The handles around a selected shape can be caught by a finger from a little beside them.
The view cube
The cube in the top left shows where you are looking. A click on one of its sides jumps to the straight view from top, bottom, front, back, left or right. A click on a corner of the cube looks at the model diagonally from that corner, and a click near an edge looks from that edge, between two sides; the spot lights up while the pointer is on it. The number keys 1 to 6 give the straight views too. Hold Shift with them and the view also zooms to the selection, as Shift+F does.
Drag the cube to turn the view around, just like dragging with the right mouse button. With nothing selected, the arrow keys turn the view as well: 15° a press, 90° with Shift. They turn the model the way they point - → turns its front to the right, ↑ tilts its front upwards. With Ctrl held, the arrows slide the view across the screen instead: a tenth of the picture a press, half of it with Shift as well. The model moves the way they point. If something is selected, the arrows move it; click on empty space first to turn the view. On a touch screen this works with one finger, without switching on «Ruota la vista con un dito».
The camera bar
At the left edge is a narrow bar. From the top:
- «Vista iniziale» brings the whole scene back into view. The key is Home; F does it too when nothing is selected.
- «Centra la vista sulla selezione» zooms to the selection (F or Shift+F).
- «Ingrandisci» and «Riduci» zoom step by step, as do the keys + and −.
- «Vista ortogonale» switches to a flat view in which parallel edges stay parallel. For measuring and lining up edges that is often more comfortable than the perspective view. O switches back and forth, and a second click returns.
- «Nascondi il piano di lavoro» (the eye over a grid) hides the plate with its grid, so you can look at the underside of a design from below. Only the view changes: new shapes still land on the workplane. A second click shows it again.
- «Posiziona il piano di lavoro», the tape measure and the framing square are tools of their own, covered below and in Measuring and notes.
The small arrow at the very top of the bar hides it if it gets in the way.
A design opens the way you left it: the angle, zoom and position of the view are kept with it in this browser, so you continue where you stopped, also after going Home or closing the page. A saved file (.lyl) carries the view along, so it opens in it elsewhere too. The view is not part of the undo history.
Looking inside: the section view
«Vista in sezione», the last button in the bar (the cut tool), cuts the view open along a plane so you can check walls, cavities and parts that fit into each other. Nothing is cut for real: the design, its files and every export stay whole. Where the plane goes through a solid, the cut is filled with the colour of the body a little darker, and a hole inside it stays empty, so you can tell solid from hollow; the filled face appears a moment after the plane stops moving.
- Choose the axis the plane stands across: X (width), Y (depth) or Z (height), as in the position fields. The plane starts in the middle of your design.
- «Grossolana» moves the plane across the whole design, «Fine» moves it a little either side of where it stands, for tenths of a millimetre. You can also type the position.
- The button beside the axes shows the other side of the cut, «Centra» puts the plane back in the middle, and «Mostra il piano di taglio» hides the blue plane.
- You can click and select what the cut lays open, inner walls included.
- «Piano di lavoro qui» puts the workplane on the cut. It lies on the plane of the section and faces out of the body that stays, like the face a cut leaves. If you then switch to the sketch, it starts exactly there, and the faint outline shows the cut, which you can draw along and snap to. That is how you sketch a lid that fits the cavity you opened with the section, for example. The button beside the axes chooses which side stays, and with it which way the workplane faces. You put the workplane back on the base plate as usual.
- «Misura» measures right on the cut: the outline shows in blue, and two clicks on it give the distance, plus its parts along the plane's two axes. Both points snap to the outline, corners first. When the second click lands anywhere on the opposite wall, it snaps square to the first point - so you read wall thickness, gaps and clearance without aiming exactly. A third click starts the next measurement, Esc ends measuring. Moving the plane clears the measurement. On a round outline, such as the cut through a cylinder or a hole, a small cross marks the centre and the centre snaps too. Click a point on the circle, then go near the point across from it: the second click lands exactly across the centre, and the number reads Ø, the diameter. From the centre to a point on the circle you get R, the radius.
- «Esporta la sezione come SVG» saves the outlines on the cutting plane as an SVG at 1:1, for a laser, a plotter, a template or a gasket. An X cut is seen from the right, a Y cut from the front, a Z cut from above. As in the export, only visible bodies go in, holes are already taken off, and bodies of the same colour are joined into one outline. Each colour stays its own path without a fill, so laser software keeps them apart as layers.
The panel hangs on its button. If it covers something, drag it by its title bar anywhere on the workplane; it opens there next time too. Double-click the title bar or drop it at the button to put it back.
The X and Esc close the panel; with a measuring running, Esc ends it first. The cut stays until you switch it off with «Sezione attiva» or go back to the design overview. While it is on, its button stays highlighted. Anything you place on the side that is cut away only shows once you switch the cut off. A tablet has no Esc, so there the panel has two more buttons: «Indietro» ends the measuring if one is running and otherwise closes the panel, and «Conferma» closes the panel in one step. A computer does not show them.
The workplane
New shapes align with the workplane. At first that is the base plate with the grid. But you can put it on any surface, to place something on a side or a sloped face.
- Press W or click «Posiziona il piano di lavoro».
- Move the mouse over a face of a body. It lights up.
- A click puts the workplane there. Everything you add now sits on that face.
Click on the empty plate instead, and the workplane lies flat at the spot you clicked, on the snap grid. New shapes and a finished sketch, a revolved one too, then appear there rather than in the middle of the plate. While the workplane lies flat on the plate like this, the plate shows only its outline: two grids in the same plane would make a flickering pattern.
On a face the origin of the workplane otherwise snaps to the grid. Click close to a corner of the face and it sits exactly on that corner. Close to an edge it lies on the edge, and the grid lines up with it; that is how you choose the angle of the grid on purpose. Without a corner or an edge, the grid on a lying face runs parallel to the body, so on a turned box it is turned with it.
A click beside the plate or Esc returns the workplane to the base plate. Quicker still is «Riporta il piano di lavoro sulla piastra di base»: the button with the downward arrow sits in the camera bar below the eye while the workplane lies on a face. Shift+W puts it directly on the currently selected face. If you hold Shift while clicking, the plane points the other way.
While a workplane sits on a face, an eye appears next to «Posiziona il piano di lavoro». It hides the workplane without dropping it, for a clear look at the design: new shapes still land on that face, and rotating still turns about it. A click on the eye shows it again, and so does setting a new workplane.
Grid and snapping
The grid shows the size of the plate. At the bottom right is the snap step: moving and scaling snap in steps of that size, for example 1 mm. Make it smaller for fine work and larger for rough arranging. «Aggancia alla griglia» in the ribbon moves the selected shapes afterwards onto the nearest grid crossing. While moving, shapes also snap to other shapes, see Selecting and arranging.
The settings window
The cogwheel in the ribbon («Impostazioni dell'area di lavoro») opens the settings. On the left are five areas: «Aspetto», «Misurazione», «Piano di lavoro», «Valori predefiniti delle forme» and «Cronologia». A change counts at once. «Imposta come predefinito» at the bottom saves the current settings as the default, so that a new design starts with them, and «Chiudi le impostazioni» at the top right closes the window. This part goes through the settings one by one.
Appearance: theme, toolbar and view cube
«Tema» sets the colour scheme of the whole program: «Sistema» follows your computer, the others are «Chiaro», «Scuro» and «Grafite (scuro neutro)». You can also change it at the top right of the editor.
«Dimensione della barra degli strumenti» makes the buttons of the ribbon on top, its shape menu and the camera controls on the left smaller or larger: «Piccola», «Media» (as it always was) or «Grande». Small leaves more room for the workplane on a laptop; large is easier to hit on a big screen or with a finger. With large buttons the groups of the ribbon go onto a second row when the window is too narrow for them. The size is kept in this browser and holds for every design.
«Posizione del cubo di orientamento» puts the view cube in another corner of the workplane: «In alto a sinistra» (as it always was), «In alto a destra», «In basso a sinistra» or «In basso a destra». In any corner but the top left, the camera controls move up into the spot the cube left. In the bottom right the cube stands just above the «Aggancio alla griglia» control. While the properties of a shape are open on the right, a cube on the right steps to the left of them. The corner is kept in this browser and holds for every design. On a narrow window, such as a phone, the setting is hidden and the cube stays in the top left.
Appearance: fast mode
«Modalità veloce» is for slower computers. It turns off shadows, edge lines on all bodies and the camera's inertia, and draws the view at screen resolution only. Your own settings are kept for later, and the switches it overrides say «Disattivato in modalità veloce» while it is on. More about what helps on a slow computer is under "When layerling feels slow" below.
Appearance: colours of the work area and the sketch
The colours of the work area are set under «Aspetto»: «Sfondo della finestra (tema chiaro)» and «Superficie del piano di lavoro sotto la griglia (tema chiaro)» for the light theme (the dark themes keep their own), next to the grid colour under «Piano di lavoro». Each colour is a button that shows the colour. A click opens a small window with the colour field, a row of ready colours, a field for the hex value and an arrow that puts the colour back to what layerling started with. Enter takes a typed hex value, and so does a click outside the window.
The sketch view has its own colours: «Schizzo: sfondo della finestra (tema chiaro)» for the window round the sheet, «Schizzo: colore della superficie sotto la griglia (tema chiaro)» for the sheet under the grid, and «Schizzo: colore della griglia (tema chiaro)», all for the light theme. «Schizzo come area di lavoro» takes over the work area's three colours in one click.
«Aspetto classico» sets the work area up as Tinkercad shows it: white ground, a pale blue millimetre grid with a darker line every centimetre, black edge lines, light from above with soft shadows. Every value can still be changed on its own afterwards. All of them start as layerling always looked, and what suits you depends on your monitor.
Appearance: axis arrows and edge lines
«Frecce degli assi» (on by default) draws three arrows at the back left corner of the plate: X in red to the right, Y in green to the back and Z in blue upwards, the way the position fields count. That is the right-hand rule Tinkercad, CAD programs and the slicers use too. With the workplane on a face they follow it. Switch them off here if they are in your way.
«Linee dei bordi su tutti i corpi» draws an outline on every body, in the colour of «Colore delle linee dei bordi» (black to begin with, as in Tinkercad): it helps when dark colours run into each other. It is off by default, and very large imported meshes are left out.
Appearance: light and shadows
«Mostra le ombre» switches the cast shadows on and off. Two sliders set how the bodies are lit. «Intensità delle ombre» says how dark the cast shadows are, and «Contrasto delle ombreggiature» moves light from the even ambient light to the main light: towards "punchy" the shaded sides get darker and the shadows show more, towards "soft" everything gets flatter. At the top end the contrast gets very strong, so shaded sides and shadows turn really dark. «Morbidezza delle ombre» makes the edges of the shadows soft instead of crisp. «Direzione della luce» turns the main light round the plate (0° from the front, 90° from the right), and «Altezza della luce» lifts it; at 90° it stands straight above the plate as in Tinkercad, and the shadows fall right under the bodies. «Ripristina luce e ombre» puts everything back.
Appearance: measures on the workplane
«Mostra le dimensioni durante lo spostamento» shows by how much you move while dragging, «Mostra le distanze dall'origine» the distances of the selection to the origin of the plate, also with several bodies selected. With «Dimensioni sempre visibili» these measures stay visible permanently, and not only while you drag. While a turned body is selected, its angles show below it on the workplane; «Mostra gli angoli di rotazione dei corpi» switches that off. More in Measuring and notes.
Appearance: selecting and moving
«Seleziona prima di spostare»: a body then has to be selected first, and only the next drag moves it. That helps when children or hurried hands touch bodies, and on a touch screen.
«La direzione del riquadro di selezione determina il comportamento»: a frame dragged to the right selects only what lies completely inside it, one dragged to the left everything it touches (drawn dashed), as in SketchUp.
«Il doppio clic apre lo schizzo» decides whether a double click on an extruded sketch opens the sketch again, as in Tinkercad, and «Il doppio clic apre un gruppo o un insieme» whether a double click on a group or a bundle opens it for editing.
«Aggancia alle altre forme durante lo spostamento» lets the edges and the centre of a shape snap to other shapes while you drag it; the grid menu at the bottom right has the same switch. «Posiziona le nuove forme seguendo il puntatore (Cruise)» makes a new shape hang on the mouse pointer and land on the face under it, like Cruise in Tinkercad; switched off, a new shape appears in the middle of the plate. More in Selecting and arranging.
Appearance: the view
«Avvia l'editor in vista prospettica»: the editor then opens in the perspective view, not in the flat one.
«Velocità dello zoom» is a slider from slow to fast: how fast the wheel zooms; above 10 only the wheel gets faster. «La telecamera continua a ruotare»: after you let go of the mouse the view turns on for a moment and slows down gently. Switched off, it stops at once, as in Tinkercad and Fusion 360.
«Evidenzia gli sbalzi a partire da {angle}°» is the angle from which a face counts as an overhang when you switch on Show overhangs in the visibility menu: those faces are hatched red and white. 30° is careful, 70° counts on good cooling of the print; 45° is the usual start.
«Taglia le mesh importate fino a» limits how many triangles an imported mesh may have when you cut, merge or intersect it, because that is calculated in your browser. A mesh above the limit is not processed; simplify the mesh first, or raise the limit if your computer can take it. A higher limit can freeze the editor for a few seconds.
Measurement: units, scale and snap steps
Under «Misurazione» you set the «Unità», the unit that measures are shown in («Scala»: millimetres, centimetres or metres in metric, inches or feet in imperial), how many decimal places a number shows («Precisione»), the «Griglia di aggancio» that moving and resizing snap to and your own snap steps under «Griglie di aggancio personalizzate».
Under «Misurazione» in the settings you set the «Unità». With «Imperiale», layerling shows every measure in inches, on the shape, in the properties panel, on the tape measure and the ruler. The snap grid then offers steps from 1/64 to 1 inch, and the grid on the plate is drawn in inches (1/8 to 1 inch, 1/4 inch by default) with a stronger line on every whole inch. Under «Mostra i pollici come» you choose whether inches appear as fractions like in Tinkercad (1 5/8, rounded to 1/64 inch) or as decimals (1.625) with as many decimal places as set under «Precisione». You can type either, "1 5/8" included. A quick way between millimetres and inches is the small switch mm | in beside the «Aggancio alla griglia» at the bottom of the properties window: it changes the unit, the plate's grid and the snap step as the settings do, for this design.
Under «Griglie di aggancio personalizzate» in the same place you add snap steps of your own: a name and a size in millimetres, for example "Pin pitch 2.54 mm" for the spacing of DIP chips, pin headers and perfboard holes, or "MX Key Unit" with 19.05 mm for the spacing of keyboard keys. The snap step menu then offers that measure whole, halved and quartered (1 ×, ½ × and ¼ ×), so shapes can be moved by one pitch, half a pitch or a quarter pitch. If you want just the measure itself, untick «Anche metà e un quarto» beside it; the menu then has only that one step. Custom steps are kept with the design and go along with «Imposta come predefinito».
Workplane: plate and printer
«Stampante» sizes the workplane to the build plate of your printer and flags bodies that reach past it, see Printing. «Etichette del piano» writes the design's name on the plate, and the printer's name and build volume when a printer is chosen.
«Dimensioni del piano di lavoro» gives the plate a size of your own, with «Larghezza» and «Lunghezza» in millimetres or the unit you chose. The grid always runs through the origin, so the stronger lines lie on the axes whatever the plate measures.
Workplane: grid
«Mostra la griglia» shows or hides the grid on the plate. «Dimensione delle celle principali della griglia» sets the spacing of its lines, and «Linea della griglia più scura ogni» whether the darker line comes every 5 or every 10 grid steps; «Colore delle linee più scure» gives that line a colour of its own, and the centre cross and the plate border take it too. «Colore della griglia» is the colour of the ordinary lines.
Every line of the grid grows wider as you zoom in, as in Tinkercad, and stays visible as you zoom out. If that is too much for you, switch off «Le linee della griglia si ingrandiscono con lo zoom» and the lines stay one pixel wide at every zoom, as in the sketch.
If the grid has disappeared, say because a colour was set to that of the plate, «Ripristina la griglia» at the end of the «Piano di lavoro» area brings its visibility, colours, spacing and line weight back to the standard, here and in the default saved with «Imposta come predefinito».
Shape defaults
Under «Valori predefiniti delle forme» you choose a shape with «Forma» and set how it starts when you add it: its width, length and height. «Usa i valori predefiniti dell'app» takes the shape back to what the app starts it with. Shapes with settings of their own show them under «Dettagli della forma». The values apply to new shapes, not to those already on the plate. «Limite dimensionale personalizzato» sets a ceiling of your own for how large the handles and the properties may make that shape; left blank, the usual limits stay.
Saved history
Under «Cronologia» the slider «Cronologia salvata» sets how many completed actions stay available for Undo after you save or reopen a design. The default is 100 actions in a design. A lower limit permanently discards the older undo steps of the design.
When layerling feels slow
layerling calculates and draws everything in your browser. On an older computer, with a weak graphics card or on several large screens the view can therefore feel sluggish. This helps:
- «Modalità veloce» under «Aspetto» turns off at once everything that costs the view a lot: shadows, edge lines on all bodies and the camera's inertia. It also draws the view at the screen's own resolution only, which on high-resolution screens is up to four times fewer pixels. Your own settings are kept and apply again as soon as you turn it off.
- The camera keeps turning: When you let go of the mouse after turning, the view turns on for a moment and slows down gently. That is on purpose, not stutter. If you are used to Tinkercad or Fusion 360, turn off «La telecamera continua a ruotare» under «Aspetto», and the view stops at once.
- Single switches: Without fast mode you can also turn off just «Mostra le ombre» or «Linee dei bordi su tutti i corpi».
- Use the graphics card: In Chrome open
chrome://gpu(in Edgeedge://gpu). Next to "WebGL" it should say "Hardware accelerated". If it says "Software only", hardware acceleration is off in the browser's settings. On Windows you can also pick "High performance" for the browser under Settings → System → Display → Graphics, so it uses the real graphics card and not the weaker one in the processor. - Simplify large imported meshes: A model of many hundred thousand triangles slows any view down. How to thin it out is in the chapter on files, under "Simplifying an imported mesh".
- Close other tabs: Every open layerling tab and every other 3D page shares the same graphics card.