preferences

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Preferences & Language

Preferences

Set your working units, tune how the command palette sorts, and keep your view settings between sessions.

Locus keeps a small set of preferences that shape how the app looks and behaves as you work. You reach them from Settings... in the app menu, or with ⌘, (Ctrl+, on Windows).

Tip

Settings is for behavior - units, nudge step, the command palette. To change the app's colors, use the separate Themes... dialog (just under Settings... in the app menu). See Themes.

Caution

Confirm against the build The preferences system is still being built out. Expect the list of settings to grow, and confirm the exact options against the version you're running.

Settings is organized into sections

The Settings dialog groups its rows into named sections, listed down the left side - click one to see just its rows, so nothing on this page is a long scroll:

• General: language, working units, auto-save interval, CLI server
• Interface: cursor style, tool tips, command descriptions, selection numbers
• Drawing: nudge step, command sort cap, tick lengths, auto-hide points, locked-object roots
• Export: SVG/DXF hairline export, export grouping
• Screencast: screencast mode, full mouse visualizer

Settings remembers which section you had open last, on this machine. Everything below is grouped the same way; each setting's own heading notes its section.

Working units (General)

Geometry in Locus is always stored in millimeters, but you choose the units you see and type. Pick from:

• Millimeters
• Inches
• Feet
• Meters

Changing the working unit only relabels the numbers in the Layers panel's X/Y fields - it never rescales your geometry. A circle that measures 25.4 mm simply reads as 1.0 in when you switch to inches. The change applies live: the panel re-labels in place, with no reload.

The same unit also drives the arrow-key nudge step (see below), so a default step of 0.1 reads as 0.1 mm in millimeters and scales naturally when you switch units.

The node graph is always millimeters

The working unit relabels the modeling side only. The node graph does not follow it - node number inputs are always in millimeters, whatever your working unit. Nothing on the node side is unit-aware, because a node's numbers aren't all lengths: Count X and Spacing X sit side by side, and Seed, Index, and Angle aren't lengths at all. There's no sensible single unit to relabel them with, so they stay in mm.

That's fine as long as you're working in mm. But the moment your working unit is not mm, the two panes show numbers that look alike and mean different things - a 25 in the Layers panel is 25 inches, while a 25 on a node is 25 millimeters. So Locus says so, plainly: a warning stripe appears across the top of the node pane, just under its icon bar, reading

Node values are in Millimeters - working unit is Inches

drawn in your theme's Selection Highlight so it's hard to miss. It's only there while the working unit isn't mm - switch back to millimeters and it clears itself. You can also dismiss it with the x on the stripe; it stays dismissed for the rest of that run of the app (closing and reopening the node window won't bring it back), and re-arms on a genuine relaunch or when you next leave mm.

Selection numbers (Interface)

On by default. Select two or more objects and Locus draws a small badge over each one - 0, 1, 2, ... - in the order you picked them. That's the same order the Item at Index node and boolean-operation operands use, so you can see at a glance which selected object is which without guessing.

Turn it off in Settings if you'd rather keep the canvas clean of badges - it doesn't change how selection order works, only whether you see it.

Screen calibration (Interface)

How big a millimeter is on your screen decides what Actual Size shows. The row names the monitor this window is on, says where the density came from - calibrated, reported by the system, or a guess - and draws a bar you match against a real ruler. Each monitor keeps its own setting, and Reset puts it back to what the system reports; it is greyed out when there is nothing to put back. Dragging the bar back onto the system's own figure counts as not calibrated rather than as a calibration that happens to agree, so the override is dropped and Reset greys out again. See Actual size.

Nudge step (Drawing)

When the modeling pane is focused and you're not typing in a field, the arrow keys move selected free points by a small step. Hold Shift to move ten times as far. You set the base step in Settings, expressed in your current working unit (default 0.1).

Auto-save interval (General)

How often Locus writes a background recovery snapshot of your work, in seconds - default 120. The snapshot is a safety net taken off to the side; it never touches your saved .locus file, and if the app quits unexpectedly the next launch offers to restore the recovered work. See Saving & opening for the full picture.

Auto-save is a licensed feature - the interval applies when your copy of Locus is licensed.

CLI server (General)

CLI is short for command line interface. The row turns on a local server that lets a program outside Locus read and change the document you have open, with your unsaved changes on screen.

It is off until you turn it on, and it does not stay on by itself between runs. The row is one status line and one button: the status reads Stopped, Listening, or Listening, one client connected, and the button reads Start or Stop to match.

Important

Under construction. This part of Settings is being built, so the row and what the server can do are both still moving.

See CLI server for what a program can do with it, how the lock gives way to your first edit, and the current limits.

Tick length (Drawing)

Two settings, in millimeters, set the default length of the marks the compass & straightedge tools drop - one for compass (arc) ticks and one for straightedge (line) ticks. This is only the starting length; you can resize any tick afterward with the Up/Down arrows.

Command sort cap (Drawing)

The command palette learns which commands you use most and floats them toward the top. Left unchecked, a command you once ran dozens of times could stay pinned at the top forever - even after you switch working modes.

The command sort cap limits how much any single command's history can weigh in that sort. Once a command hits the cap, extra uses stop pushing it higher, so the ordering stays responsive to what you're doing now.

• Default cap: 10
• Minimum: 1
• Saves live as you change it

If you had a command with a very high historical count from before, the cap applies on read too - so it won't stay stuck at the top after a mode switch.

Auto-hide points (Drawing)

Off by default. When on, the points an operation creates as a by-product - the extra points that pile up as you draw curves - are hidden the moment the operation finishes, to keep a busy construction legible. They aren't moved or grouped: they stay exactly where they are, keep resolving and snapping, keep their Layers row, and come back from their own eye toggle.

Three rules keep it from hiding anything you meant to keep:

• Points that were already there before the operation are never touched.
• A created point that something outside the operation depends on stays visible: it's part of the drawing now, not scaffolding.
• A bare free point: the Point tool, and only the Point tool - is left alone, since placing it is the whole action. A Midpoint or Intersection point, though, hides even when it's the only thing the operation made: they're construction aids, not the drawing itself. See Points.

Export grouping (Export)

Decides how an exported SVG or DXF is split into layers.

Group by Layers keeps each object's own grouping: the panel group it belongs to, or the node it came from. This is the default and it matches what you see in the Layers panel.

Group by Outline Color ignores that and puts every shape sharing an outline color on one layer instead, so each color arrives as its own layer downstream.

What sorts a shape is its outline, not its fill. A filled shape lands on its outline's layer, and the fill has no say in it.

This works alongside Hairline black: the colors are read before they are stripped, so you can have color-sorted layers and plain black output at once.

Grid and axis display

Locus remembers your view settings - such as whether the grid and axes are shownsuch as whether the grid, axes, and point labels are shown - so your workspace comes back the way you left it between sessions.

Screencast

Off by default. Turn on Screencast mode and Locus overlays a small keystroke chip - key caps plus the command name - in the lower-left corner of the window every time you press a modifier shortcut, for recording screencasts and tutorials. It's a passive overlay: it never intercepts the keystroke, so the app behaves identically whether it's on or off. See Keyboard shortcuts for what it looks like.

A second toggle, Full mouse visualizer, only matters while Screencast mode is on: it pins a mouse-button indicator in the lower-left corner of the window alongside the keystroke chips. Turn it off and scrolling shows a small wheel icon at the cursor instead, and the keystroke chips drop down to take its place.

Tip

Most preferences apply the moment you change them. The one exception is language, which reloads the window so every menu and label rebuilds - see Language & internationalization. Your drawing comes back with the reload, unsaved changes included, so switching the language never costs you work. In the rare case a drawing is too large to carry across (very large embedded images), Locus asks first with the same Save / Discard / Cancel choice as New and Open; Cancel keeps the current language.

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