How to Use the Digital Building Twin Editor

Tour the Digital Building Twin editor — toolbars, Scene panel, camera controls, and floor selector for the 3D modeler.

The Digital Building Twin editor is a full-screen workspace. Everything you do — drawing structure, placing objects, binding sensors, framing the view — happens here. This page is the map: what each toolbar and panel does, and how to move around the scene. The pages that follow go deep on each task; this one gets you oriented.

When you add a Digital building twin widget to a dashboard, the editor opens with a starter scene already in place: a building with one floor. You build outward from there.

The Digital Building Twin editor with the Scene panel on the left, the mode toolbar along the bottom, and a partly built floor in the 3D view

The toolbar centered along the bottom of the screen is where most work begins. It has four modes:

Select — the default. Click objects to select them, move them, and edit their properties. Press Escape at any time to return here.
Build — opens a row of eight buttons: four draw tools (Wall, Door, Window, Fence), Trace from map, Import from file, and the one-click Flat roof and Pitched roof buttons. Import from file carries a Beta badge and appears only where DXF import is turned on. Use them to create the shell of the building. See Drawing your building, Tracing from the map and Importing a DXF plan.
Furnish — opens the object catalog: five category tabs (Furniture, Appliance, Kitchen, Bathroom, Outdoor) and a scrollable strip of 3D models to drop into the scene. See Placing objects.
Sensors — opens the Sensors panel, where you connect devices and bind their readings to objects in the model. See Binding sensors and colors.

Click a mode to enter it; click it again to return to Select.

What is the Scene panel?

The Scene panel lists every element in the model as a tree — the building, its floors, and the walls, slabs, items, doors, windows, and zones on each floor. Click any entry to select that element in the 3D view. Double-click an entry (or use the pencil icon) to rename it — giving walls and zones meaningful names like "Loading Dock Wall" or "Server Row A" makes the model far easier to work with when you start binding sensors.

What can I change in the properties panel?

Select any object and a properties panel opens with the settings for that specific element:

Items (catalog objects) — Name, Position (X, Y height, Z), Rotation (with +45° / -45° buttons), Scale, and measured Dimensions.
Walls — Length, Height, Thickness, and a Material grid (white, brick, concrete, wood, glass, metal, plaster, tile, marble, or a custom color).
Doors and windows — Width, Height, position along the wall, hinge side and swing direction for doors, sill depth for windows.

Every selected object also gets an inline action badge. For catalog items, doors, and windows it carries Move, Duplicate, and Delete buttons; for walls and other structure it carries Delete only. The badge works in the 2D view as well as in 3D, so you can lay out and rearrange a floor entirely from the top-down plan. The properties panel shows the same Duplicate button, again only for catalog items, doors, and windows.

The Digital Building Twin editor in 3D view: the scene tree on the left, the floor selector with the 3D / 2D toggle, the Pan, Rotate and Zoom hints at the top, and the Preview, Cancel and Save buttons at the top right

How do I move the camera?

The editor has two camera modes, switched from the floor selector (see below):

3D view — orbit freely. Left-drag rotates, right-drag pans, the scroll wheel zooms. Hold Space to make left-drag pan instead of rotate.
2D view — a straight top-down plan view. Rotation is locked; you can only pan and zoom. This is the cleaner view for laying out walls and reading a floor plate.

The camera you leave the editor with is saved with the widget and becomes the view the dashboard tile opens at, so frame it deliberately before you save. The editor remembers the live camera when you switch between Edit and Preview and when you go from 3D to 2D and back, so a quick check in 2D never costs you your carefully set angle. The pan offset from the arrow controls is saved too, and a scene you save while in 2D still keeps its 3D angle for the next time someone opens it in 3D. The dashboard shows the saved view exactly as framed, without re-centering on the building.

What do the Edit and Preview buttons do?

A bar in the top-right corner of the editor holds, from left to right: the Show sensor pins toggle (a drop icon with a pin count, shown once at least one metric is pinned), the Preview button, Cancel, and Save.

Preview hides the toolbar and the side panels and renders the model with full-quality lighting, the way it will look on the dashboard. The button then changes to Edit.
Edit brings the toolbar and panels back.

The camera carries over in both directions, so switching never loses your framing.

What does the floor selector do?

A floating stack of floor buttons sits to one side. It lists every floor (labeled L0, L1, and so on), lets you add or copy a floor above or below, and switches the active floor. It also carries the 3D / 2D view toggle and, for multi-floor models, a Stack / Solo toggle. See Floors and levels.

How do I undo, redo, or delete something?

Undo — Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on Mac).
Redo — Ctrl+Shift+Z (Cmd+Shift+Z).
Delete — select an object and press Delete or Backspace, or use the Delete button in the properties panel or the inline badge. The building and its floors are protected and cannot be deleted this way.
Cancel a tool — press Escape or right-click to drop out of a drawing or placement action back to Select.

How do I save or leave the editor?

Save — the button in the top-right corner. It opens a Widget name dialog; enter or confirm the name and the model is saved to the dashboard.
Cancel — leaves the editor. If you have unsaved changes, the editor asks you to confirm with a Discard unsaved changes? dialog — choose Discard to leave or Keep editing to stay.

What do the bottom toolbar modes do?