3D view

Navigate

Hold Shift + Space while dragging to orbit from anywhere on the model without selecting or moving what is under the pointer.

Drag to orbit, use the wheel to zoom, and pick a camera preset (isometric, top, front…). The orbit goes down to the horizon and no further: you can come all the way to a straight-on elevation, the facade seen square with no vertical skew, but never under the model, where there is nothing but the back of its slabs. Hold Space — or turn on the Pan button under the trace bar — to drag the camera sideways instead of orbiting. A short right-click on a room, the plot, furniture, outdoor items, openings, free walls or stairs opens a context menu for colours, materials and shapes (the same choices as the catalogue bar); drag with the right button to pan. A Reset the view button under the trace bar frames the current preset again. Camera, walkthrough and recadrer sit on the middle row with pan and rotate; plot, roofs and a section cut sit on that same row — wrapping onto the last line when space is tight. Five layout buttons, fixed at the bottom-right of the editor, choose the plan, the model as a floating inset over the plan, both side by side, the plan as a floating inset over the model, or the model. Both floating windows move by their title bar, resize from their bottom-right corner, and keep their position between sessions. Three icons on that bar close the inset, expand it to fullscreen, or show both views side by side. The same pill holds Zen — the model in its own tab — and Hide the UI, for the model alone. Perspective and orthographic modes are available. A theme button in the top bar, just before Plus, cycles dark, light, then the system setting — chrome only. Day and night on the model are set with the sun/moon slider at the top of the 3D view: drag through the day to reach night, and back — the handle stays under your finger. Click a point on the track instead and the model travels there over about four seconds, the light, the sky, the lamps and the materials following the hour all the way; click again mid-journey and it sets off again from the hour you can see. With 3D view motion set to Still, the hour you ask for is applied straight away. Your choice is remembered between sessions. Your last camera pose (orbit, zoom, target), preset, projection and sun position are remembered between sessions, as is the split with the 2D plan. Repeated clicks on the same spot cycle through overlapping objects along the view ray — a chimney or skylight hidden by the roof, then the roof itself, then whatever sits behind.

Click the plot in the 3D view to select it: the drawer opens with the plot size and the ground type, both editable. Double-click still opens the catalogue.

Walkthrough

Enter first-person mode to walk through the rooms at eye level. Doors can open; free walls block the path like room walls. Keyboard shortcuts are listed under Help (or `?`). In a headset, the zen controls follow you into the scene: a small panel on your left wrist, pointed at with the other hand. At night, lamps in the home, in the garden and on the street light the floors and walls — in walkthrough, in the perspective camera, and in a headset. A fireplace or garden firepit glows with a warm light. An arcade cabinet, pinball, TV, computer, jukebox, neon or air-hockey table, left on, lights the floor from its screen. A kitchen hood and a wood stove do the same.

Render styles

Fifteen looks are available for the model — among them scale model, clay, blueprint, sketch, technical, wireframe, winter, diorama, brutalist, cute (where the volumes themselves get rounded edges), performance (flat colours with no edges or lighting, the lightest to handle) and Realistic, a physically based style lit by a studio environment. In perspective — walkthrough, headset, or the perspective preset — Realistic also bounces light between surfaces, so rooms feel filled rather than lit only by the sun; isometric keeps the previous look. On a computer, in walkthrough and in the perspective camera, Realistic goes further: each room is lit by the daylight that actually reaches it, so interiors stay readable near windows and in shadowed corners. The lighting settles in the background a moment after a plan opens or an edit ends, and the model stays usable while it does. That interior lighting only runs where it has been measured — Chromium browsers, Chrome and Edge for now — and on plans light enough for it to keep up; elsewhere, and on phones and tablets, the editor keeps the previous lighting without asking anything of you. Styles are picked from the Styles tool on the trace bar, above the catalogue; the tool is greyed while no 3D view is on screen, since a look only changes the model. Styles change materials and lighting; a few also soften edges. Nothing on the plan changes, and the style is saved with your preferences.

Roofs and levels

Every room carries its own roof: none, flat, terrace with a parapet, pitched with two slopes, or curved — a barrel vault, the roof of a winter-garden conservatory. Pitched and curved roofs have an axis you can turn east–west or north–south. Coverings depend on the kind: waterproof membrane, gravel, timber, clay tile, zinc, and glass. Glass is glazing, not cladding — you see through it, and a curved glass roof gets the slim arches and ridge bar of a real conservatory (a terrace has no glass option: you walk on it). Set a roof in the settings panel to cover the whole building, then let a single room differ.

Multi-level plans stack in 3D. In the 3D view, the level panel at the top left lists every floor; below the chips, **See all floors** (`N`) stacks them into one model, and **Translucent floors** makes upper levels semi-transparent while stacked. Roofs can be shown or hidden when the level has a roof definition. The first time you orbit a house with its roof on, a short tip offers to hide it (`T`) so the rooms show from outside. Levels can be reordered by dragging their chip in the floor list — stairs and lifts are reconciled, and the whole move is one undo. House vs apartment changes the ground: a plot with margins, or a concrete slab that follows the footprint.

What to show

The buttons under the trace bar toggle what the model shows: plot or slab, roofs, a section cut, door leaves and windows. Opening the doors (`P`) also swings the leaf on the 2D plan, so both views show the same door; `P` and `F` grey out when the plan holds no door, or no window. Under Verify in the catalogue, Display holds the joinery toggle that hides every door and window in 2D and 3D without removing them (`O`), and a furniture-free view that strips all furniture from both views without deleting anything (`H`). A load readout sits at the bottom left of the 3D view — frames per second, draw calls, triangles, geometries and textures, plus the current style — handy for comparing what each render style costs; `I` hides it or brings it back. Hide the UI — the eye on the view-layout pill — slides every control away and leaves only that eye to bring them back.

Zen mode

The Zen button sits on the view-layout pill at the bottom right, next to Hide the UI. It opens your model alone, full screen, in its own tab. It stays in step with the tab you are working in: edit on one screen, contemplate on the other. Nothing is lost when you close it — it is a way of looking, not a separate document.

A column of controls sits at the left edge and fades until you reach for it:

• Season — spring, summer, autumn or winter, with falling leaves or snow
• Weather — clear, mist, rain or storm. Mist veils the distance in perspective and stays lighter in isometric view; the choice resets to clear when the showcase reloads
• Day or night, with ambient sound you can mute
• The surrounding neighbourhood, which you can hide to keep the house alone — and a cat you can call over
• The setting itself — one button cycles through four settings: the neighbourhood, the top of a tower above the clouds (made for high-rise apartments, with a skyline whose windows light up at night and a small plane you can send past), an island in the middle of the sea (palms, lagoon, jetty, seagulls, a boat doing its rounds, a lighthouse flashing at night and a sea turtle you can call ashore), and a forest clearing (oaks and undergrowth, sparrows by day and owls at night, and a fox you can call to the woodland edge)
• Roofs, shown by default — a button hides or shows them. Room dimensions never appear
• A slow rotation you can stop, and a switch between isometric and perspective — at night, perspective lets every street lamp light the pavement
• A button to step inside the model with a VR headset — you walk it at human scale, pinching to move — and one to place it in your room in augmented reality (iPhone and iPad)

Music

Three ambient tracks come with Planaira: Blueprint Garden, Blueprint Daydream and Blueprint Breeze. Open More in the top bar, then Music, to open the panel: the track list, the one playing named above it, and the volume at the bottom. Closing the panel does not stop the sound.

One track follows on from the next, and the volume is remembered between sessions — the same level in the editor and in zen mode, where the player shrinks to a single play/pause button and shows the track name while it plays.