Troubleshooting & FAQ

The 3D scene is blank or says "The 3D scene stopped"

The editor draws the van with WebGL, so it needs a current browser with hardware acceleration on. When the graphics driver drops the context — usually the machine ran out of GPU memory or the browser suspended a background tab — the scene is replaced by a card saying The 3D scene stopped. Nothing is lost: the layout lives in the store and in the cloud, not in the canvas.

1. Press Reload scene on the card. It rebuilds the WebGL context without reloading the page.
2. If it keeps happening, close other tabs running 3D or video and check that hardware acceleration is enabled in your browser settings.
3. Still blank? Reload the page — autosave has your last change (see the status chip in the toolbar).

The editor is slow on my laptop

VanPlot only redraws when something changes — an orbit, a drag, a store write — so an idle scene costs nothing. Two things force it to redraw continuously: Auto-rotate and the tilt test's auto-sweep. Everything else that costs frames is a toggle you control.

1. Open Settings and switch Auto-rotate off — it is the one setting that keeps the GPU busy every frame.
2. Under Background, pick Studio. The outdoor backdrops draw scenery around the van; the studio is a disc and a grid.
3. Turn off the Weight distribution map and, if you don't need it, the Center of mass marker.
4. Hide items you're not working on with ⇧H, and leave photo mode when you're done with it.

My imported model is huge, tiny, or invisible

The importer takes GLB/glTF, STL, OBJ, and Collada (.dae) up to 30 MB, and refuses files above 500,000 triangles — simplifying those would freeze the tab, so export a reduced version first. Everything under that is welded, merged per color, and decimated to a 60,000-triangle budget in your browser.

Size problems are almost always units. glTF and Collada declare meters, but STL and OBJ carry no unit, so I guess from the magnitude: a longest side under 8 is read as meters, under 800 as centimeters, anything larger as millimeters. A part drawn in inches, or a 900 mm cabinet exported in centimeters, lands in the wrong bracket.

1. In the import dialog, type the real-world size in meters. Proportions stay locked, so one axis is enough, and nothing can exceed the van interior.
2. Already placed? Select the item and set its dimensions in the Inspector, or use the resize gizmo.
3. "No mesh geometry found" means the file holds only curves, empty groups, or lines — export the solid geometry.

Create with AI failed or says the daily limit is reached

Each account gets 30 AI components per day, reset at midnight UTC — every generation is a long, expensive call, and sign-up is free. The component designer stays unlimited, and every AI-built part is editable there.

Two other messages you may see: The AI declined this request means the model refused the description — rephrase it as a plain piece of furniture. AI request failed is a transient error on the AI side — wait a moment and press Generate again.

A share link doesn't open, or says it was turned off

There are two kinds of link, and they fail differently. A share link (the ones listed in the Share modal) lives on my server. If the viewer sees This link was turned off, the owner switched it off with Turn off or deleted it — flip it back with Turn on, or make a new one.

The permanent remix link carries the entire plan inside the URL. Nothing can switch it off, but it's long, and some chat and forum apps truncate it. Then the viewer sees This link didn't survive the trip — send it again, or use a share link, which is short.

Can I use VanPlot on a phone, tablet, or trackpad?

The viewer for shared plans works on anything. The editor needs room for its panels and a pointer, so below about 900 px of width (or 500 px of height) it shows VanPlot's editor is built for bigger screens with three ways out: View plan (read-only), Back to dashboard, and Continue anyway.

On a tablet after Continue anyway: dragging a card from the Library into the van needs a mouse, but tapping a card adds the item already selected, and the move and resize gizmos work with a finger. One finger orbits, two fingers pinch to zoom and pan. Walk mode shows an on-screen D-pad on touch devices.

Keyboard shortcuts don't do anything

Three usual causes. ⌘ means ⌘ on a Mac and Ctrl on Windows and Linux — the cheatsheet under ? shows the right symbol for your machine. Shortcuts pause while your cursor is in a text field, a number field, or a dropdown, so the keys type instead — press Esc or click the scene to give it focus back. And Space pans only when focus isn't on a button.

Shortcuts that clash with browser defaults — ⌘D, ⌘S, ⌘K, ⌘Z — are intercepted by the editor while it has focus, so they won't bookmark or save the page.

My changes are gone

Autosave writes to the cloud about a second after you stop editing, and the status chip on the toolbar tells you where things stand: Saved, Unsaved, Saving…, or Retry save when a write failed. Closing the tab flushes pending changes on the way out — but a dead connection can still eat them, so ⌘S before you close if in doubt.

Undo is in memory: ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z keep up to 100 steps for the current session, and a page reload clears them. For anything older, open History — your named Snapshot entries plus an automatic checkpoint every 10 minutes while you edit (the newest 15 are kept) — and press Revert to this.

A printout or PDF looks wrong

Every printable document — build pack, plan sheets, weighbridge report, wiring and water pages, the 1:1 wall template — is laid out for A4 with its own margins, and the drawings sit at a fixed scale (1:20 for plan sheets, full size for the wall template).

1. In the print dialog, pick A4 and keep Scale at 100% — "Fit to page" shrinks the drawings and the scale is no longer true.
2. Leave margins on Default; the pages carry their own.
3. Turn on Background graphics so table headers keep their shading, and choose Save as PDF as the printer for a file.

Where do I get help?

The fastest route is the Send feedback pill floating above the shortcut bar in the editor: pick Feedback or Feature request, write up to 2000 characters, press Send. It reaches my inbox with your account's email as reply-to, so I can answer you directly.

Email works too: support@vanplot.com goes to me, not a queue. Refunds go the same way — within 14 days of purchase, from the address you bought with, no questions.