The Interface¶
The main window has three regions: a menu bar and tool bar across the top, the left tabs for model input and results, and the canvas on the right.
Tool bar¶
The tool bar groups appear in a fixed order. The first three are always visible:
| Group | Contents |
|---|---|
| File | New, Open, Save, Run analysis, Lock/Unlock |
| Zoom | Zoom window, zoom in, zoom out, fit |
| View / Case | View-mode dropdown, Case dropdown, mode/scale controls |
The remaining groups — Scene, Add, Edit/Delete, Transform and History — can be shown or hidden from View → Tool bar: … or in Preferences.
History and snapshots¶
The History group has Undo and Redo, and two snapshot buttons:
- Save snapshot asks for a name and stores the model (without results) with the date and time.
- Manage snapshots lists them, with Restore, Rename… and Delete (double-click restores).
A snapshot never changes: to keep later edits, save another one. Restoring asks
first, discards the results and can be undone with Undo. Snapshots are saved in
the .x2d file and come back when it is opened (.json files do not keep them),
and creating, renaming or deleting one marks the model as modified. New, Open,
Import and New from Template start with the snapshots of the file, or none.
Menus¶
- File — New, New from Template, Open (+ Recent), Import… (SAP2000
.s2k, DXF), Save / Save As, Export… (SAP2000.s2k, DXF, Robot.str, Python script), Write Report… (Word), Write Tables to Excel…, Print Graphics…, Preferences, Exit. - Edit — Undo/Redo, Cut/Copy/Paste, Delete, transforms (Move, Array, Rotate, Scale, Mirror), Curve to bar / Area to triangle (bake a geometry object into real elements), Select All, Find Entity.
- Structure — Project Info; Materials, Sections (Bar / Area), Spectral Functions, Fields; and the geometry entries: Nodes (+ Node Springs, coincident-node check/merge), Bars (+ Bar Springs), Triangles, Objects (segment, arc, multisegment, rectangle, polygon), Supports, Constraints, Model check, and Add model from file (merge a second model, welding coincident nodes).
- Loads — submenus for Point, Distributed, Edge, Settlement and Temperature (bars / areas) loads, each with Manage… and Add…; plus Load Cases.
- Analysis — Analysis Cases, Combinations, Auto Comb. (EN1990); Cuts (Add cut…, Manage cuts…, Results… — see Results → Cuts); Generate mesh (F6), Model info, Run (F5), Lock (Ctrl+L); plus Variants Workspace… (which includes the Sequences tab) when the variants & construction sequences feature is available.
- Design — Code preferences, Design combinations, Buckling lengths…, then Concrete Members (ULS/SLS), Concrete Areas (ULS), Steel Members (ULS), Timber Members (ULS), and Punching. See Design.
- Scene — switch, create, rename, delete Scenes.
- Selection — Select all / by…, Previous, Invert, Clear, Edit selected nodes / bars / triangles, Divide bars.
- View — View mode, panel and tool-bar visibility toggles, and Navigate to… (Alt+1 … Alt+7) for the input panels that the canvas and Find Entity do not already reach: supports, springs, materials, sections, loads, combinations, analysis cases.
- Help — Documentation (F1), Keyboard Shortcuts, About.
Left tabs¶
- Geometry — Nodes, Elements, Supports, Springs, Constraints.
- Properties — Materials, Sections.
- Loads — Loads, Analysis Cases, Combinations.
- Analysis — Results, Design.
Hide or show the whole panel with View → Tables panel (F9).
The left dock also hosts on-demand workbench tabs that open beside Tables / Assistant:
- Punching — the column list and its actions (plate models). See Design.
- Buckling — opened by Design → Buckling lengths…, a read-only table of
the selected members where you assign the per-member buckling-length factors
K. It closes with its own OK button. See Design → Buckling lengths. - Cuts — opened by Analysis → Cuts → Results…: cut and case selectors, the Bars/Areas/Total resultant table, and the distribution plot with CSV export. See Results → Cuts.
Preferences¶
File → Preferences is organised in tabs: General, Display, Design
and Colors. The Display tab holds the display sizing defaults (text,
marker and line sizes) and the persistent style defaults — the colour map
for each field, the default number of levels, continuous vs. banded fill,
smoothing, and the bar-diagram and utilisation-ratio styling. The Design tab
holds the default design code per material (concrete, steel, timber), whose
options come from the same registry as Design → Code preferences; a code
stored inside an opened .x2d takes precedence over this default.
Display panel¶
A dockable Display panel (toggle with View → Display panel) has two tabs.
Model — layer visibility: what is drawn in the scene. Node markers and labels, bars and bar labels, areas (triangles/quads) with their borders and labels, objects, support and spring markers, cuts, and the grid (with spacing and snap). In the deformed and modal views an Undeformed structure toggle draws the reference geometry behind the deformed shape. When the model has geometry objects, the Structure view gains a Mesh checkbox that overlays the finite-element mesh generated from those objects (visual only — picking stays on the objects). Reset display turns the layers back on.
Style — live, session-only styling of the active view, in two sections:
- Colour maps — the colour map of the active view's field. Stresses/forces, shell reinforcement, plate displacements, scalar fields and pressure / temperature loads each keep their own colour map, chosen from one curated, science-friendly list (perceptually-uniform, diverging and sequential palettes, each shown with a preview swatch; no rainbow maps). Also here: continuous vs. discrete (banded) fill, number of levels, contour lines, nodal smoothing, and a manual colour-scale range. The section is enabled only in views that actually draw a colour-mapped field.
- Diagrams — styling for the bar views. For force diagrams (M/V/N): positive / negative colours, fill opacity, line width, filled band vs. outline, and value labels. For utilisation-ratio colouring (steel / timber design): the colour scheme (traffic-light green→red, or any colour map), the pass/fail threshold, the over-limit colour and the bar width. Each sub-panel is enabled only for the view it applies to.
At the bottom, Save style… / Load style… / Set as default export or import
the whole visualization style (colour maps, diagram and ratio styling, and the
colour registry) as a portable .json preset, or persist the current style as
the startup default. Ready-made presets (publication, presentation,
colorblind-safe, grayscale, high-contrast, blueprint) ship in the repository's
styles/ folder.
Changes made in the Style tab apply only for the current session; the persistent defaults live in Preferences ▸ Display (and Set as default writes the current style there).
Canvas navigation¶
| Action | Control |
|---|---|
| Zoom (anchored at cursor) | Mouse wheel |
| Pan | Hold the middle button (wheel) and drag |
| Zoom to a window | Zoom-window button, then drag a rectangle |
| Zoom in / out / fit | Tool-bar buttons, or = / - / 0 |
| Select | Left-click an item, or drag a selection rectangle |
| Cancel add mode | Esc |
The selection count is shown on the right of the status bar.