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?

Yes — since September 2026 the editor opens on a phone and a tablet: the same project, catalog and panels, laid out for a thumb. What you are editing plus undo, redo and save sit along the top; a sheet you pull up from the bottom holds Add, Build, Edit and More; 3D / Top and the doors are one tap away over the canvas. Turn the phone sideways and the tabs become a rail down the edge with a drawer. Dialogs such as the Build Sheet go full-screen, and phones render a lighter scene (no shadows, lower resolution) so the van stays smooth. The viewer for shared plans still works on anything.

Touch: tap a Library card to add it already selected, tap an item to select it, drag the selected item to move it, and drag anywhere else to swing the camera; two fingers pinch to zoom and pan. The selected item gets finger-sized handles — corners resize, arcs rotate, the green square sets the height. Long-press any icon-only button to read its name. A short tour of the thumb row starts on your first visit (replay it from the More sheet), and walk mode shows an on-screen D-pad with a held Run button. Not yet on touch: the tilt test.

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.

My van's numbers differ from the manufacturer's

First check you picked the vehicle for your market. North American vans are separate entries — Ford Transit (US), RAM ProMaster, Mercedes-Benz Sprinter (US), Mercedes-Benz Metris — because their makers publish different roof heights, payloads and body names than the European sheets. A US Transit planned on the European rows reads about 5 cm off on roof height and hundreds of kilograms low on payload.

If the right vehicle is picked and a figure still disagrees with your tape measure, fix the van: Wheel arches and Door openings in the Van inspector take your own measurements, and Edit as custom van opens every dimension and weight. The one gap I know of — US cargo floor length reading 10–15 cm (4–6 in) short because the US sheets measure to a different point — is explained in Choosing your van.

I can't click an item under the floor

That is on purpose. A tank or heater mounted Under the floor is covered by the finished floor once you deselect it, and it ignores clicks so you never grab a hidden tank while aiming at the floor. Hold X to see through the floor and click it, press N (or ⇧N) to step the selection through your components until it lands on it, or click its row in the Components tab. With it selected, the floor stays see-through and U brings it back inside.

My measurement disappeared

Measurements are only drawn while the measuring tool is open — press M and they are all back, listed in the right sidebar. They are saved with the project, so they survive a reload. Opening a project always starts with the tool closed.

If one is really gone: a measurement you deleted comes back with ⌘Z as long as you have not reloaded the page — undo is one timeline across the layout and your measurements, and it says so when the step it took back is not on screen; a project keeps at most 40; and a project last saved before September 2026 never stored them — back then closing the tool wiped the list.

My project changed after the September 2026 update

In September 2026 every van in the database was checked against its maker's own documents, and where the maker prints a different figure the database now follows it. Projects follow the database, so one saved earlier can open a little differently: items taller than a lowered ceiling settle down, a window the corrected sliding door now overlaps is moved to the nearest clear strip of wall, wheel arches and the rear axle sit where the maker draws them, and the payload figure changes.

What moved most: the ceiling came down on rear- and all-wheel-drive Ford Transit and VW Crafter / MAN TGE (about 100 mm), on rear-wheel-drive Renault Master / Movano / NV400 (about 140–150 mm) and on the standard-roof rear-wheel-drive Sprinter (70 mm); the arches and rear axle moved forward on the Sprinter L2 RWD and the Master L3 RWD; the Iveco Daily cargo box is 3–8 cm shorter; the Transit Custom H2 and the high-roof Transporter got taller; door openings changed on most vans — the Vito / Metris slider is 822 mm wide, not 930; and payload dropped by 50–170 kg on the Trafic / Vivaro / NV300 / Talento and changed on the Caddy, the Berlingo and the rear-wheel-drive Master. The Ducato family, the RAM ProMaster and the US Transit did not move.

What to check: open the project, read the design checks in Build stats, look down the Components tab for anything that was nudged, and hold your own tape measure against the Body panel. If your van really is different from the maker's sheet, say so — your numbers always win over the database and are never overwritten by an update:

1. Door openings in the Van inspector — type the sliding-door and rear-door sizes you measured.
2. Wheel arches — type your arch box: length, depth, height and chamfer.
3. Edit as custom van (under the picker) — when the ceiling, the length or the weights differ, turn the van into a custom one that starts from the same figures and correct them.

My van's doors are labelled Estimate

That label appears in the Door openings section of the Van inspector when the maker publishes no clear door opening for the van — today that is the Toyota HiAce. The planner then draws the doors from a formula based on the body size: good enough to see where the entry zone falls, not good enough to order a fridge by. Measure the clear opening between the seals — the sliding door's position from the bulkhead, its width and height, and the rear doors' width and height — and type the numbers in. The label changes to Measured on your van, and the wall opening, the entry zone, walk mode and the plan sheets follow your figures.

Every other van reads Maker figures, with the maker's name and the date the document was checked. A brochure still rounds and model years drift, so measure those too before anything that has to fit within a few centimetres.

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.