The component designer

What the designer is

When the catalog doesn't have your exact cabinet, the component designer lets you build it yourself from five simple primitives: box, cylinder, sphere, cone, and wedge (a ramp). You assemble parts on an open floor, give the component a name, and save it to My Components — from there it places, stacks, snaps, and resizes in the editor exactly like a catalog item.

Open it from the editor: go to the Library tab and press Design at the top. To change a component you already made, hover it in My Components and use Edit in designer.

Building from parts

The five shape buttons in the designer toolbar each add one part to the scene. Every part has its own position, size, rotation, and color, edited in the inspector that opens on the right when a part is selected.

1. Type a component name in the toolbar — "Overhead cabinet", "Swivel table" — you'll need it to save.
2. Click a shape button (box, cylinder, sphere, cone, or wedge) to add a part.
3. Drag the part into place, or use the inspector's Position and Size fields for exact numbers — everything is in meters.
4. Pick a color from the palette or the custom color swatch.
5. Repeat — duplicate parts you need twice (Ctrl/⌘ D) instead of rebuilding them.
6. Press Save to library (or Ctrl/⌘ S). A brand-new component drops straight into your van, selected and ready to position.

The Layers panel

Every part is a row in the Layers list on the left, newest on top — the same idea as Figma's layers. Click a row to select the part (even one buried inside others), double-click to rename it, and use the eye to hide it while you work on what's behind it. Hovering a row reveals duplicate and delete buttons.

Moving parts — four tools (V, G, E, S)

The toolbar has the editor's placement tools plus one extra:

Free move (V) — drag parts around the floor.

Move gizmo (G) — axis arrows for controlled moves, including height.

Rotate gizmo (E) — free-angle rotation around the vertical axis.

Scale gizmo (S) — stretch a part along individual axes by dragging the handles; designer-only.

R rotates the selected part 90°, and the inspector has an exact rotation field in degrees. Undo and redo (Ctrl/⌘ Z / Ctrl/⌘ Shift Z) cover every change — the designer keeps its own history, separate from the editor's.

Hollow & Frame — one box into many

Select a box and the inspector shows a Convert section with two one-click builders:

Hollow replaces the box with an open-top tub built from five 18 mm panels — the instant starting point for a drawer, garage box, or sink cabinet carcass.

Frame replaces the box with a 45 mm stud frame — twelve studs and rails tracing the box's edges, the way you'd actually frame that volume in timber. Framing built this way is priced stud-by-stud in the Build Sheet's cut list.

Both conversions produce ordinary parts: every panel or stud can then be moved, resized, recolored, or deleted on its own.

Saving and using your component

Save to library stores the component in My Components (it needs a name and at least one part). If you opened the designer from a project, a newly created component is placed into that van automatically when you return; edits to an existing component update it in the library.

In the editor your component behaves like any catalog item: it stacks, snaps, clamps to the van, resizes with per-axis Max buttons, and takes weight, cost, and power values in the Inspector.