Editing on the Canvas

Editing on the canvas

Selecting

To select…	Do this
One control	Click it.
Several	Shift-click or Ctrl-click each one.
Everything	Ctrl+A (Edit → Select all). Locked controls are skipped; while a group is isolated, only that group's members are selected.
Everything in an area	Drag a box starting on empty space. Any control the box touches, even partly, is selected. Hold Shift or Ctrl to add to the current selection.
Across the whole screen	Start the box on the dark area around the screen and drag across.
A control hidden behind others	Click its row in [[Layers
One member of a group	Alt-click it, or isolate the group (double-click). See [[Layers and groups

Clicking a grouped control selects the whole group. Click empty space, or press Escape while isolated, to clear things.

Moving

• Drag a selected control. Everything selected moves together, and so do the contents of any selected panel.
• Arrow keys nudge the selection 1 GUI pixel; Shift+arrow nudges 10. A run of nudges on the same selection is a single Undo step.
• Snap to grid (View menu) rounds positions to the grid size from Project settings. The grid itself can be shown or hidden with Show grid.
• For exact positions, type X and Y in Properties.

Resizing

A selected control shows eight handles, on the corners and edge midpoints.

• Drag a right or bottom handle to grow or shrink from that side.
• Drag a left or top handle to move that edge; the opposite edge stays in place.
• When you resize a panel, the controls inside it move and stretch according to their anchors, exactly as they will in Minecraft. Hold Ctrl while dragging to resize the panel alone. See Anchors and responsive layouts.
• Or type Width and Height in Properties.

Copy, paste, duplicate, delete

Action	Shortcut
Copy	Ctrl+C
Paste	Ctrl+V
Cut	Ctrl+X
Duplicate	Ctrl+D (or the Duplicate button in Layers)
Delete	Delete

New controls and copies get simple numbered IDs: button1, button2, label1, and a copy of play becomes play1. Links between the copied controls (for example a button's action that targets a copied label) are updated to point at the copies. Copying a panel includes everything inside it, and groups are preserved.

Undo and redo

Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y. Arcadia Studio keeps the last 200 steps. A drag, a resize, a batch of nudges, or a whole command such as Attach or Arrange counts as one step. Text fields have their own undo while you're typing in them.

Zoom

Zoom	How
Toward the pointer	Ctrl + mouse wheel
In / out	Ctrl + plus / Ctrl + minus
Actual size	Ctrl+0
Fit the whole screen in the window	Ctrl+9

Zoom changes only the view, never the project. The toolbar and status bar show the current zoom.

Lock

Lock a control you don't want to bump by accident, such as a background panel:

• Click the lock in its Layers row, press Ctrl+L, or right-click → Lock.
• A locked control stays visible but can't be clicked, dragged, box-selected or nudged on the canvas. Clicks pass through to whatever is underneath.
• You can still select it in Layers and edit it in Properties. If its unlocked parent panel moves, it moves along.
• Unlock it the same way. The lock only affects the editor; it has no effect in Minecraft.

Right-click menu

Right-clicking a control (on the canvas or in Layers) offers: Isolate group, Select, Group selected, Ungroup, Duplicate, Rename…, Hide/Show, Lock/Unlock, Delete, then Arrange (Bring to front, Bring forward, Send backward, Send to back), Align (see Align and distribute), Attach to panel and Detach from panel. Images and sprites also have Edit in pixel editor… (or Draw in pixel editor… when they have no picture yet), and sprites Sprite sheet editor…. Items show their shortcuts.