Saving & Managing Drawings

Saving and edit access

Ctrl+S (or the toolbar Save button) saves the drawing to your account in the cloud. A save also refreshes the thumbnail your project cards and view dock show. There's no autosave -- save when you want a checkpoint. If you try to navigate away with unsaved changes, the app warns you first. One thing to know: saving clears the undo history, so Ctrl+Z can't step back past your last save.

If a save fails -- connection trouble, usually -- you get a warning and your changes stay right where they are, still marked unsaved. Nothing is silently lost.

Drawings have one editor at a time. If someone else has a drawing open for editing, you get it read-only: a banner below the toolbar names who's editing, editing tools lock (Pan and Orbit still work), and a Request Edit Access button asks them to hand it over. The handoff saves their work first, then transfers the lock to you.

The Drawing Info panel

The right-side panel is the drawing's home base -- collapse it to a slim strip when you want the canvas. From top to bottom:

• Name and details -- the pencil opens editing for the drawing's name, description, and which project it belongs to.
• Send drawing -- email the drawing as a PDF, using the same export options as downloading (see the export topic).
• Details -- the project, customer, and location the drawing belongs to, plus the location's Seismic Category badge when one has been established.
• Metric tiles -- live capacity, BOM, and area numbers; each opens its full breakdown (see the capacity and bill-of-materials topics). There's also an estimate card, part of the estimating workflow.
• Attachments -- files attached to this drawing (spec sheets, photos, vendor documents), with upload.

Capacity Breakdown

The capacity tile opens the Capacity Breakdown -- pallet and carton totals in a tabbed view, sliced the same ways as the BOM. The "Account for obstructions" toggle flips every number between GROSS (the theoretical maximum, as if no building column cost a position) and NET (estimated column losses deducted). It starts on gross; quote conservatively from net. The same choice appears on the PDF export's summary options.

The Bill of Materials

The BOM tile opens the Bill of Materials: every rack component the current layout needs, counted live from the drawing -- frames (by height and depth), beams (by length and profile), row spacers, anchors, wire decks, and pallet supports. Tabs slice the list three ways: totals for the whole drawing, per area, or per elevation. Change the layout and the BOM changes with it; there's nothing to regenerate.

From the modal you can copy the list, download it as a CSV, or Send to Vendor -- an email with the BOM attached and, if you choose, drawing sheets riding along so the vendor sees what they're quoting.

Organizing drawings

Drawings belong to projects, and projects belong to customers -- that's the whole hierarchy. The Dashboard and Customers pages manage it: browse a customer, open a project, and its drawings appear as thumbnail cards. Creating a drawing from a project pre-assigns it there (and the wizard's Info step lets you re-point it).

Inside the drawing editor, the sidebar lists drawings that are within your current project (if you're currently working within a project) as well as drawings that are currently not assigned to a project so you can switch without leaving the page. To create a new drawing, click the PLUS icon in the sidebar. You'll be warned if the current drawing has unsaved changes. A drawing's name, description, and project assignment are editable any time from the Drawing Info panel.

Creating things -- where the buttons are

Every entity has a home where its create button lives:

• Customers -- on the Customers page, the "New Customer" button sits top-right in the page header. Brand-new account with no customers yet? The empty state offers the same button front and center.
• Projects -- open a customer; the header has a split button whose main action is "New Project". A customer with no projects yet shows a "New Project" card in the grid instead, and there's always a plus card at the end of the project grid.
• Contacts and Locations -- same split button, different half: click the caret next to "New Project" and pick "New Contact" or "New Location" from the dropdown.
• Drawings -- three places: (1) on a project, the "New Drawing" button in the project header or the plus card at the end of its drawing grid -- both pre-assign the drawing to that project; (2) inside the drawing editor, the plus icon in the sidebar; (3) the drawing editor's empty state, which offers Generate using AI, Create from scratch, and Guided Setup.

And for all of it, there's the shortcut that skips the buttons entirely: ask Clark. "Create a customer called Meridian Foods with a location in Columbus" does the whole thing from chat -- Clark creates customers, projects, contacts, and locations by name (drawings he builds with you on the drawing page instead).