User manual · Chapter 2 of 9

The workspace

The Home page, the ribbon and its four stages, the panels either side, the 2D and 3D views, projects and files, preferences and the built-in help.

The Home page

Home is what you see when the application starts, and the Home button at the left of the top toolbar brings it back at any time. Press it again to return to your work. The ribbon is hidden while Home is showing.

The left rail has the ways into a job: New Job, Open… and New from Template under Start, and New Project…, Open Project… and Sample Jobs under Projects. When a machine is active its name and travel are shown there with a Change machine button. Back to design appears when you have a job open to return to.

The main area lists your projects and your recent files. The recent list can be filtered by name or folder and shown as a list or as cards; a file that has been moved or deleted is tagged MISSING. Below that are cards for first-time setup (your machine, a post-processor, your cutters, a template, an imported drawing, your preferences) and links to the guides and downloads on carvect.com.

How the window is laid out

From the top down:

The toolbar. Home, a New/Open menu, a Save menu, an Export menu (Export G-code (All)…, Export Selected…, Job Sheet / Report…), Undo and Redo. At the right-hand end, a readout shows what the application is doing ("Ready" when idle).
The ribbon. The Stage button at its left end, the command groups for that stage, and the license badge at the right.
The side bar for double-sided jobs. Only on a double-sided job: Side 1 (Front) and Side 2 (Back) buttons, and Show other side, which draws the opposite face faintly and mirrored so you can line features up across the flip.
The workspace. A column of panels on the left, the 2D and 3D views in the middle, a column of panels on the right.
The status bar.

The ribbon and the four stages

The Stage button at the left end of the ribbon shows the current stage in capitals. Click it to choose another. There are four:

Setup: The machine, the job's stock, the tool and material libraries, and importing.
Design: Drawing, editing, arranging and measuring vectors, and placing 3D models.
Manufacture: Toolpaths, the simulation, the checks and G-code output.
Settings: View options, the colour theme, preferences, and your account.

A job normally moves through the first three in order. Choosing a stage changes the ribbon to that stage's commands, and also brings the most useful side panel forward: Setup shows the Job Setup form, Design shows Properties if the drawing has anything in it.

Each group on the ribbon has a heading. A heading with a ⌄ after it opens a card of commands, arranged in small labelled sets. Tool Database, Material Database, Select and Preferences are single commands and act straight away.

Leaving the Design stage cancels whatever drawing tool was active. Leaving Manufacture closes any toolpath form you had open without saving it.

The menu bar

Every ribbon command is also in the menu bar, which suits keyboard users and anyone who remembers where things were: File, Edit, Job, Design, Arrange, Toolpaths, Machine, Tools, View and Help. On macOS, Preferences, About and Quit are in the Carvect Pro application menu as usual.

The Design and Arrange menus are greyed out until the job has been set up. A new job has no stock, and there is nothing to draw on until there is.

The side panels

The left column has four tabs down its edge:

Setup: The Job Setup form. See the Setup chapter.
Sheets: The sheets in the job, for double-sided work and layouts that span several boards.
Layers: The layers on the active sheet.
Profiles: The shipped library of 3D reliefs and 2D outlines.

The right column has six:

Toolpaths: The list of operations, with the simulation controls underneath when a preview is running.
Properties: The selected object's position, size and settings. Toolpath forms open here too.
Nesting: Settings for packing parts onto the sheet.
Tools: The tool library, for picking and checking bits.
Materials: The material library.
Transform: Orientation, scale and position for an imported 3D model.

Drag the edge of a column to make it wider; the width is remembered. The chevron (❮ or ❯) on a column's outer edge collapses it, and clicking any of its tabs opens it again. The maximize button at the top right of the views collapses both columns at once, and Ctrl+Shift+M (⌘⇧M on a Mac) does the same.

The 2D and 3D views

The centre has two tabs, 2D and 3D. The 2D view is where you draw and select. The 3D view shows the stock, any 3D models, and the toolpaths as lines at their real depths, and it is where the simulation plays.

In the 2D view, roll the mouse wheel to zoom about the pointer, and drag with the middle button to pan. + and − zoom too. Home or 0 fits the whole job into the window, as does View ▸ Reset 2D View (Ctrl+0). Rulers along the top and left edge show the job's units.

In the 3D view:

Drag with the left button to orbit.
Drag with the middle button, or hold Shift and drag with the right button, to pan.
Drag with the right button to roll.
Roll the wheel to zoom.
Click a face of the navigation cube in the corner to look straight at that side, or press Iso for the three-quarter view.

The Reset view button beside the tabs frames the job in 2D or returns the 3D camera to its starting angle, whichever view is showing.

The status bar

The left end names the job, with a dot before the file name when there are unsaved changes, and the project it belongs to if it is in one. Beside it is the active machine. When the stock is bigger than the machine's travel this turns red and says by how much, for example "job exceeds travel (X 1300>1220 mm)", so a job too big for the bed is obvious long before you get to it.

The middle of the bar shows short messages: the result of the last command, and a one-line description of whatever the pointer is over. The version number is at the far right.

Projects

A project is a folder on your disk that holds a job and everything that goes with it. Carvect Pro marks it with a small file named project.carvect and creates three folders inside it: Designs for jobs and the drawings they come from, Imports for models, vectors and photographs as they arrived, and G-code for what goes to the machine. Because it is an ordinary folder, you can copy it, back it up, or open it in Finder or Explorer.

To make one, choose File ▸ New Project…, type a name, and pick where the folder should go. It starts in Documents, in a folder called Carvect Projects.

File ▸ Open Project… adds an existing project to your list. Pointed at a folder that holds several projects, it adds them all. Pointed at an ordinary folder of work, it asks whether to make it a project, which adds the project file and the three folders and moves nothing.

Projects are listed on the Home page. Click one to see its files. Clicking a job or drawing opens it, clicking a model or picture imports it into the current job, and anything else (G-code included) is shown in Finder or Explorer. Rename… changes the name shown for the project; the folder keeps its name on disk.

While the open job lives in a project, Save As starts in its Designs folder and Export G-code starts in its G-code folder.

File ▸ Create Sample Jobs… builds a project of worked examples: one job for each kind of toolpath, and three parts that use several operations together in the order a shop would run them. They are ordinary jobs. Open them, change them, cut them.

Opening and saving

A Carvect job is a .cvc file. It holds the whole job in one file: the drawing, the toolpaths, the tools used, the stock and the machine.

File ▸ New: An empty job, with no stock yet. Set up the job before drawing.
File ▸ New from Template…: A job with a template's stock, machine and staged operations already in place.
File ▸ Open…: Opens .cvc jobs, and also .svg and .dxf drawings, which open as a new job. A DXF is read as millimetres.
File ▸ Open Recent: The last few files you opened. The number kept is set in Preferences.
File ▸ Save / Save As…: Saves the job. A name typed without an extension is saved as .cvc. Save As can also write .svg or .dxf, which keeps the vectors on the active sheet and nothing else.

When you start a new job, open another, or quit with unsaved changes, you are asked whether to save them first.

Only one copy of the application runs at a time. Starting it again, or double-clicking a .cvc file, brings the running window forward and opens the file in it.

Autosave and crash recovery

While autosave is on (it is, unless you turn it off in Preferences), the open job is written to a recovery file every 60 seconds. A normal exit deletes that file. If the application did not close cleanly, the next time it starts it asks whether to restore your unsaved work. Yes loads it, marked as unsaved so you remember to save it properly; No discards it.

Preferences

Open Preferences from File ▸ Preferences… (on macOS it is in the Carvect Pro application menu), from Settings ▸ Preferences on the ribbon, or from Home.

Default units: Millimetres or inches, for new jobs.
Autosave: Turns crash recovery on or off.
Autosave interval: How often the recovery file is written, in seconds. The default is 60.
On exit: Whether to ask about unsaved changes when you close.
Context help: The hover cards on forms and the descriptions on buttons. Turn it off once you know your way around.
Feeds & speeds: Set feeds and speeds from the material fills a new operation's feed, plunge and spindle speed from the job's material and the chosen bit. The same switch is Machine ▸ Auto Feeds & Speeds.
Plunge rate: Keep the plunge rate within what the bit can take is the second tick box under Feeds & speeds. It lowers the plunge rate for thin bits in hard material. It only ever lowers it.
Recent files kept: 1 to 50. The default is 10.
Undo history steps: How far back Undo goes. The default is 500, and 0 means unlimited.
Selection colour: The colour selected shapes are drawn in.

Changes take effect when you press OK.

The colour theme is set separately, under Settings ▸ Theme. There are eleven, from Paper (the default) and Studio Light to the darker Graphite, Carbon and Hybrid Dark, and the 2D and 3D views follow the theme. The grid, guidelines and Dynamic Input are switched in the View menu or under Settings ▸ View.

Help while you work

Hover over any ribbon button, menu item or form field and a card explains it: what it does, what changes if you alter it, and what zero means where zero is special. The same short description appears in the status bar. Toolpath and setup forms also keep a larger card on the panel that follows the field under the pointer. On a job in inches, the measurements in the help are given in inches.

The Help menu holds Account & License…, Check for Updates…, Open-Source Licenses… and About Carvect Pro. The Home page links to the guides and the full feature list on carvect.com.