Interface

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Interface

The Solarxy GUI is built from a menu bar along the top, a dockable workspace of panels around a central viewport, pane toolbars floating on the viewport itself, and a status bar along the bottom. This page covers every chrome region. For what you do to the model once it is loaded - shading, UV, wireframe, mesh visibility, lighting, post-processing - see Inspection.

• Menu bar
• Pane toolbars
• Sidebar
• Dockable layout
• Status bar
• Viewport layouts (split view)
• Loading models and HDRIs
• Console, toasts, and modals
• Preferences

Menu bar

The menu bar has eight top-level menus. Toggle the whole bar with F10.

Menu	Contents
File	Open Model… (Ctrl/⌘+O), Import HDRI… (Ctrl/⌘+Shift+O), Recent Files, Close Model, Quit.
Edit	Preferences… (Ctrl/⌘+,), Save View Settings as Default - persists the current display / rendering / lighting state as the launch default.
Render	Shading, Inspection, and Material Override submenus; Tone Mapping; Bloom and SSAO toggles; a Lighting submenu (IBL Mode, Lock Lights); Background; Save Screenshot… (C).
Review	Review Mode (Shift+R), Show Markers, Save Review Notes (Ctrl/⌘+S). The menu label turns amber (● Review) while review mode is active. See Review System.
View	Projection, Turntable, Link Cameras (in split view); a Show submenu (Grid, Axis Gizmo, Local Axes, Validation Overlay, Normals, UV Overlay, Bounds, Wireframe Weight); Show All Meshes.
Layout	Single (F1), Split Vertical (F2), Split Horizontal (F3), Quad (F4), Three-Left-Big (F5); Save Layout, Restore Saved Layout, Reset Layout to Default.
Window	Panel-visibility toggles - Viewport (Ctrl/⌘+1), Sidebar (Tab), Outliner, Properties, Review Panel, Material Inspector, Console (`), Status Bar, Menu Bar (F10).
Help	Solarxy Wiki, Keyboard Shortcuts (?), Check for Updates…, About Solarxy.

Per-pane controls in the Render and View menus (Shading, Inspection, Material Override, Background, Projection) act on the active pane - the one the cursor last selected.

Pane toolbars

Each 3D pane carries a set of small bracketed text labels that float directly on the scene - a 3ds Max-style viewport menu. They are the fastest way to change just that pane:

• [ Scene 3D ] - switch the pane between the 3D scene and UV Map view.
• [ Shaded ] - the effective display mode. Its dropdown nests the Inspection modes and Material Override.
• [ Perspective ] - projection, with Overlays and Background as nested submenus.

A UV pane shows [ UV Map ] and [ Display ] labels instead. Labels are bare text until you hover them, when they pick up the amber accent.

Sidebar

Tab toggles the Sidebar. It is the canonical surface for scene-global display, post-processing, and material settings - three collapsible groups:

Group	Default	Controls
Display	Open	Lock Lights (Shift+L), Turntable (V) with an RPM slider when active.
Post-Processing	Open	Bloom (Shift+D), SSAO (Shift+O), Tone Map (Shift+T), Exposure slider (E / Shift+E).
Material	Closed	Roughness Scale and Metallic Scale sliders, plus Reset. Disabled while a material override is active.

Per-pane view controls live on the pane toolbars; validation and HDRI details live in the Properties panel. Every sidebar control is also bound to a keyboard shortcut - you can drive Solarxy from either surface.

Dockable layout

flowchart LR
    classDef auto fill:#1F2430,stroke:#78A0EE,color:#78A0EE
    classDef manual fill:#1F2430,stroke:#FFC44C,color:#FFC44C
    classDef def fill:#1F2430,stroke:#5C6773,color:#CCCAC2
    classDef active fill:#33415E,stroke:#FFC44C,color:#FFC44C

    DEF[default_dock_state]:::def
    LAST[last_layout_json<br/>auto, on quit]:::auto
    SAVED[saved_layout_json<br/>manual, Save Layout]:::manual
    ACTIVE[Active layout<br/>in memory]:::active

    DEF -->|first launch| ACTIVE
    LAST -->|next launch restore| ACTIVE
    ACTIVE -->|on quit| LAST
    ACTIVE -->|Save Layout| SAVED
    SAVED -->|Restore Saved Layout| ACTIVE
    ACTIVE -->|Reset Layout to Default| DEF

Loading

The three persisted layout states (default, last, saved) and the three menu actions that move between them.

The viewport and every panel live as tabs in a single dockable workspace. Drag a tab by its title to dock it against a different edge, split a region, stack it with another tab, or tear it out into a floating window.

Seven tabs:

Tab	Contents
Viewport	The 3D scene. Special: it never floats and is transparent so the wgpu surface shows through. It can be closed and reopened from Window → Viewport (Ctrl/⌘+1).
Sidebar	The collapsible-groups panel described above.
Outliner	Mesh and Material lists - per-row hide toggles, right-click actions, click a row to frame it.
Properties	Model, HDRI, and Validation sections. Clicking a validation row flies the active camera to the affected mesh.
Review Panel	The annotation browser - see Review System.
Material Inspector	View-only per-material PBR introspection - see Inspection → Material Inspector. Shows a placeholder until a model is loaded.
Console	The docked log viewer - see Console, toasts, and modals.

Every panel ships in the default layout, so discoverability is the layout - no panel pops open on model load. The live arrangement is auto-saved on quit and restored next launch.

Layout menu entry	What it does
Save Layout	Snapshot the current arrangement into a saved slot.
Restore Saved Layout	Replay that snapshot. Greyed out until you've saved one.
Reset Layout to Default	Rebuild the default arrangement without touching either saved or auto-saved blob - the escape hatch when a layout gets wedged.

If a persisted layout fails to load (for example after an upgrade adds a new tab), Solarxy logs a debug line and silently falls back to the default - your data is safe, only the arrangement resets.

Status bar

A single-line status bar runs along the bottom of the window (toggle it from Window → Status Bar). It shows the loaded file and format, validation counts, the review badge, the active-pane label, frame time / fps, and the GPU backend. It collapses gracefully on narrow windows.

Viewport layouts (split view)

Five viewport layouts, switchable from the Layout menu or F1-F5:

Key	Layout
F1	Single
F2	Split Vertical (two panes, side by side)
F3	Split Horizontal (two panes, stacked)
F4	Quad (2×2)
F5	Three-Left-Big (one large pane, three small)

Each pane has its own camera, inspection mode, display settings, and background. The active pane follows the cursor. Switch any pane between the 3D scene and UV Map view with 3 (or its [ Scene 3D ] toolbar label) - a common setup is one pane on the model and one on its UV layout.

Ctrl/⌘+L toggles camera linking so panes orbit together; Shift+L is Lock Lights, which freezes the 3-light rig relative to the model instead of the camera.

Loading models and HDRIs

Four ways to load:

1. Drag and drop onto the window - models (.obj, .stl, .ply, .gltf, .glb) and HDRIs (.hdr, .exr) both work.
2. File menu - Open Model… (Ctrl/⌘+O) or Import HDRI… (Ctrl/⌘+Shift+O), via a native file picker.
3. Recent Files - File → Recent Files lists the 10 most recent; the stored history is capped by ui.max_recent_files (default 20).
4. CLI flag - solarxy -m path/to/model.obj opens the file at launch.

UV Map view (press 3 or pick "UV Map") shows the texture-space layout with selectable backgrounds:

Console, toasts, and modals

Console - ` toggles the docked log viewer. It is backed by tracing: filter by ERROR / WARN / INFO / DEBUG, substring-search the message column, and right-click any line to copy it. Default capture is solarxy=trace.

Toasts - transient status messages (screenshot saved, HDRI loaded, validation summary) stack bottom-centre. The queue caps at five; the oldest drops on overflow.

Modals are draggable and dismiss with Esc:

• Preferences (Ctrl/⌘+,) - see Preferences.
• Update - appears when Help → Check for Updates… finds a newer release; its action button is platform-aware.
• Keyboard Shortcuts (?) - a read-only reference; see Keyboard Shortcuts.
• About Solarxy - version and project info.
• Screenshot review - opens when you press C. It shows a downscaled preview; nothing is written to disk until you choose a path with Save As….

Esc does not quit the app. It dismisses the topmost open modal. To exit, close the window or use File → Quit.

Live frame time and fps are shown in the status bar, not a floating overlay.

Preferences

Solarxy persists settings in a per-user config.toml. Three edit surfaces each own a different slice:

1. Sidebar + Edit → Save View Settings as Default

Tune display, post-processing, and material settings live in the sidebar (and via keyboard shortcuts), then choose Edit → Save View Settings as Default to persist the current state as the launch default.

2. The Preferences modal - Edit → Preferences… (Ctrl/⌘+,)

A five-tab modal with OK / Cancel / Reset to defaults (the reset affects only the active tab); Esc cancels.

Tab	Settings
Startup	Window width (640-7680 px), window height (480-4320 px), MSAA (1× / 2× / 4×). Window size and MSAA take effect on next launch. Also shows the config file path with an Open config file button.
Appearance	Theme - Ayu Mirage Dark or Ayu Mirage Light. Applies immediately on OK.
View	The default background, plus a manager for your custom backgrounds (add / edit / delete solid or gradient backgrounds).
Interface	Status bar visible at launch, recent-files capacity (cap 50), and the Reviewer name written onto new review annotations.
Updater	Check for updates on launch, and the release channel (Stable or Prerelease).

3. Direct TOML editing

Open config.toml from the Startup tab's Open config file button and edit it in any text editor. The full file schema, every section, and its location on each OS are documented on the Configuration page.

See also: Inspection · Keyboard Shortcuts · Configuration · Review System · User Guide