The canvas

The canvas is the big picture in the middle of Design. It shows your surfaces as the projector sends them out, or over the photo of your room after a scan. You select, move and reshape surfaces here, zoom in to line edges up to the pixel, and undo anything with Ctrl + Z.

1The Design screen

Design has four parts. You work on the canvas in the middle; everything else is about what you select there.

• The Surfaces list (left) has every surface, group and mask. The top of the list draws on top. See Surfaces list and groups.
• The canvas (middle) shows the picture and lets you edit it. Its tool bar sits above it.
• The inspector (right) shows the settings of what you selected: a surface, a group, a mask or a projector. With nothing selected, it shows the project's own settings (name, brightness, gamma).
• The strip (bottom) keeps your scenes and cues. See Scenes and cues.

The canvas tool bar

2Camera view and Projector view

The canvas can show your design two ways.

• Projector view shows exactly what the projector sends out: every surface on black, hand-drawn or scanned. It is always there, and it's the only view in a project you drew by hand.
• Camera view appears after you scan the room with your phone. It shows the scan photo with your surfaces drawn over it, where the camera saw the light land. Everything outside the projector's picture is hatched: the projector can't light it.

1. Press Camera or Projector in the canvas tool bar. You can also right-click the canvas ▸ View ▸ Camera view or Projector view.
2. Edit in either view: a corner dragged in the camera view lands on the same spot of the real object in the projector view.

3Zoom and pan

Zoom in to place corners exactly; zoom out to see the whole picture. Handles, labels and outlines keep their size on screen at any zoom, and edges stay sharp.

4Select surfaces

1. Click a surface to select it. Its outline turns lime, its corners or points get handles, and the inspector shows its settings.
2. Shift-click or Ctrl-click (⌘-click on a Mac) another surface to add it to the selection. Do it again to take it out.
3. Click an empty spot or press Esc to select nothing. The inspector then shows the project's settings.

• Ctrl + A selects every surface of this projector (masks are left out).
• Alt-click a surface that is in a group to select the whole group; keep the button down to drag the group.
• You can also select in the list: click, Ctrl-click and Shift-click work there too. See Surfaces list and groups.
• Locked surfaces can't be clicked: the click goes through to whatever is under them. That's handy for a finished background wall.

5Move and reshape

6A surface under another one

A big surface, such as a wall, often sits under smaller ones. You can still drag it by pressing on a spot that another surface covers.

1. Select the lower surface: click its row in the Surfaces list, or click it where nothing covers it.
2. Hover over it. Where another surface is on top, the canvas shows the name of the surface a drag would move: the selected one.
3. Press inside it and drag. The selected surface moves, not the one on top.

7Nudge with the arrow keys

The arrow keys move the selection by 1 projector pixel; Shift + arrows move it by 10. The step is the same at any zoom, so zoom in to watch small moves.

• What moves: the point you last pressed (its handle has focus), otherwise the whole shape. With several surfaces selected, they all move.
• Back to the whole shape: press inside the shape, or press Esc once.
• A quick burst of nudges is one undo step.

8Outlines, masks and names

The canvas marks your surfaces so you can find their edges even when their looks are dark. These switches change what it marks; none of them changes what the projector shows.

• Outlines shows or hides the faint outlines round each surface, hand-drawn or scanned, in both views (and the grid lines of meshes you aren't editing). The selected surface always keeps its lime outline.
• Masks appears when this projector has masks. Off, the masks' dashed coral outlines are hidden and can't be clicked, except the selected one. See Masks.
• Names: the canvas names only the selected surface and the one under the pointer. Right-click the canvas ▸ View ▸ Surface names shows every name.
• Preview quality (right-click ▸ View): Auto runs the preview light while a projector window is open, so the projector stays smooth; Smooth is always full rate; Light is 12 frames a second at half resolution.

9Undo and redo

Almost everything you do in prism can be undone: moves, shapes, looks, settings, groups, deletes. Each gesture is one step, so a whole drag undoes in one go.

1. Press Ctrl + Z to undo, and Ctrl + Shift + Z (or Ctrl + Y) to redo. Or use the curved arrows in the top bar.
2. Hover an arrow to see what it will undo, for example Undo: move Door (Ctrl+Z).
3. A note at the top of the canvas says what was undone.

10Right-click menus

Right-click anything for what you can do with it: the empty canvas, a surface, a point, an edge, a row of the list, a layer. On a touch screen, press and hold. From the keyboard, press Shift + F10 or the Menu key.

• A shape added from the canvas menu lands where you right-clicked.
• Greyed items say why when you hover them, for example Select a surface first.
• Align the projection… and Input view are Advanced.

11Hints and tips

• Zoom to the selection, then back. Shift + 2 fills the canvas with what you selected; Ctrl + 0 shows everything again.
• Background first, then lock it. Place the big wall surface, then lock it (the padlock in its row). Clicks then go through it to the surfaces on top.
• Drag big surfaces from the list. Select a wall in the list, then drag it on the canvas anywhere, even over other surfaces.
• Nudge with the projector on. Open the projector window and use the arrow keys: 1 pixel at a time is easier to judge on the real object than a mouse drag.
• Many surfaces? Turn on Surface names (right-click ▸ View) so you always know which is which.
• A slow computer? Set the preview to Light (right-click ▸ View). The projector itself keeps its full quality.

12When something looks wrong

13Mouse and keyboard

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