Appearance
Save, open and clear
Save
The floppy icon downloads sketch.slop.json.
It holds the sketches, the constraints and their values, the document order, the face references, the extrudes, the blends, the part colours, and where you dragged each dimension annotation. Everything needed to reproduce the part and its parametric behaviour.
It does not hold the solid, which is rebuilt on open, nor the undo history, nor the camera.
Save anything you would mind redrawing. The net below is a net, not a filing system.
What the browser holds for you
As you work, the document is kept in this browser, on this machine. Open the app again after closing the tab, reloading, or a crash, and it offers the copy back:
Pick up where you left off? This browser is holding a document from 4 minutes ago, kept as you worked.
Start freshRestore it
Restore it loads that document, through the same reader that opens a file. Start fresh drops it and gives you a blank sketch.
Four things about it:
- It holds one document. Working replaces what is held, so it is the work in progress rather than a history of everything you have drawn.
- It belongs to this browser on this machine. A different browser, a private window, or another computer knows nothing about it.
- Clear drops it, since Clear is you saying you are finished with this document.
- A document with a large imported file inside it can be too big to hold. When that happens the Selection section says so, once, and Save is the only copy.
None of this replaces Save. The held copy lives in a browser, and browsers get cleared, reinstalled and replaced.
Open
The folder icon. Pick a .slop.json file.
The document is replaced entirely, and the solid is rebuilt from the features. That rebuild takes as long as building it did, so a part with several curved cuts opens slowly. See rebuilds and speed.
Files from every earlier version of the format still open, and are upgraded as they load. Saving writes the newest.
A file that is not a valid document gives not a slop-cad document in the Selection section, and your current work is left alone.
Example
Loads a 40 by 25 mm rectangle, already fully constrained. The quickest way to see what a finished sketch looks like, and a good base for experiments.
It is undoable, so it does not cost you your work permanently. It does replace the current sketch.
Clear
Resets to a single blank sketch: every feature, every blend, and the solid, all gone.
DANGER
Clear asks for nothing and cannot be fully undone. Ctrl+Z afterwards restores the sketch geometry, and it does not restore the feature list or the blends.
Save first if there is any doubt.
Moving work between machines
Save the file and copy it. That is the only way to move an editable part.
STL and OBJ are meshes and cannot be opened back as a document.
What else the browser remembers
Interface preference: how wide you left the panels, which ones you put away, which sections you left open, whether grid snap was on, whether you dismissed the 3D hint, and which theme you chose. That is separate from the held document above, and clearing one does not clear the other.