The bottom bar runs along the bottom of the Giraffe window, under your panels. It tells you at a glance whether your project is saved, whether your geometries are up to date, and which drawing layer and scenario your next geometry lands in. That keeps the areas and unit counts you pull from a site study accurate while you test options.
Where the bottom bar appears
The bottom bar appears in every project. Inside a space, and on the screen where you create a new project or space, the bottom bar only shows drawing hints. The save status, engine controls, drawing layer, and scenario are hidden there.
The map's view controls sit in the context bar at the top of each map panel. That includes Align North, Zoom In, Zoom Out, Center on project, and the 2D/3D toggle.
Check that your project is saved
The icon on the far left of the bottom bar shows whether Giraffe has saved your changes. Hover over the icon to see its status.
A green icon means you're online. Its tooltip reads Saving… while changes upload, then Project Saved.
A red cloud with a line through it means Giraffe can't reach the server right now. Its tooltip reads Changes not saved — you appear to be offline. Your changes are saved on this device and sync when the connection comes back. Edit a Project explains working offline.
Change engine settings
Click the gear icon, Engine Settings, in the bottom bar to open your project's engine settings. The engine calculates your geometries' 3D forms and results as you draw.
Empty Return Visualization: choose how Giraffe shows a geometry that has no calculated results. nothing hides it. outline shows it as a simple outline. magenta fills it in magenta. This setting is unavailable in a read-only project.
Calculate facade area: turn this on to calculate facade area. It can be slow on large projects.
Interior wall tolerance: how close two points must be for Giraffe to treat them as the same point when it calculates facade area. The default is 0.1 m. This setting is only available when Calculate facade area is on.
Pause and start the engine
Click the pause icon, Pause Engine, in the bottom bar to stop Giraffe from recalculating your geometries. Pausing helps on a large project when you want to make many edits in a row without waiting for each one to calculate.
While the engine is paused:
A colored border appears around the map.
A Resume Engine button appears in the top-right corner of the map.
Error messages from the engine are hidden from the bottom bar.
To start the engine again, click Resume Engine on the map.
OR
Click the play icon, Start Engine, in the bottom bar.
Results the engine calculates stay as they were until you start the engine again.
See your active drawing layer
The bottom bar shows the short name of your active drawing layer. That is the layer new geometries go on when you draw. Click the layer name to open Layers and clear your current selection.
See your active scenario
The bottom bar shows which scenario you're working in, next to the drawing layer name.
Base Model means no scenario is active.
One active scenario shows its name, with a colored dot if the scenario has a color.
More than one active scenario shows the first scenario's name followed by +1 more…, +2 more…, and so on. Hover over it to see every active scenario.
Click the scenario name to open the Scenarios app.
See Base Model vs Scenarios for when to draw in the Base Model and when to draw in a scenario.
Find geometries with errors
When a geometry fails to calculate, a colored message appears in the bottom bar. These messages only appear while the engine is running.
Section Error (yellow): one geometry failed to calculate. The message shows the error, and how many other geometries have errors.
Engine Status (yellow): the engine reported a status problem.
Engine Error (red): the engine itself hit an error.
Hover over the message to highlight the geometries with errors on the map in magenta. Click the message to select those geometries.
Some of those geometries may sit on a hidden layer or in a hidden scenario. In that case, Giraffe tells you how many it couldn't select. Click Show hidden layer(s) and scenario(s) in that message to show them.
See Troubleshoot Projects for what each error means and how to fix it.
Fix a measurement accuracy warning
An orange message appears in the bottom bar when your drawing is too spread out for Giraffe to measure accurately. It reads one of these:
Your geometry is too far from the project origin to give accurate measurements.
You are drawing over too large an area for accurate measurements.
Click the orange message to select the geometries causing the warning. If your project boundary is the cause, Giraffe shows The project boundary spans too large an area.
Drawing hints and prompts
The center of the bottom bar shows hints while you draw and edit. Each hint tells you what to do next, and points out keyboard shortcuts for the tool you're using. For example:
Hold
Sto snap to other geometries.Hold
Shiftto constrain the angle, or to round a distance.Press
Pto draw a polygon instead of a rectangle.Press
Gto turn the grid on or off.Press
Escto cancel.
Each hint clears after about seven seconds.
Some tools ask you to type a number or some text in the center of the bottom bar. Type the value and press Enter to confirm. Press Esc or click away to cancel.
