Creating and Importing Files

Press Ctrl / ⌘ + N in the file manager, or click New Model in the band at the bottom of the listing, to start a document. Bring an existing file in with Import on the toolbar, or by dragging it onto the window. Both live in the file manager, and both are also on the right-click menu when you are inside a folder.

Starting a model

The New Model dialog has one field, Name, and two buttons. There is no template picker, no starter geometry, no choice of units and no choice of kind. Every model starts blank.

The name is required, and Create stays dead until you type something. Nothing here validates characters or warns you about a name you already used: if the name is taken in the folder you are in, Kapy quietly appends a number, so Bracket becomes Bracket 2. Renaming later does not do that, which is why a rename can be refused when a create never is.

Create writes the empty document and takes you straight into the editor, in the same tab. The new model lands in the folder you were looking at. If you were in Recents, Trash or a SmartObjects category, it lands in the root folder instead, because those views are not places.

Starting a smart object

New Smart Object is the same dialog plus one decision you cannot change later from this screen: the Grip, which is how the object attaches to whatever it is placed on.

Creating smart objects needs the Maker plan. On the Free plan the dialog accepts your name and grip, then the upgrade panel opens instead of a new document, reading Smart Objects are a Maker feature. Placing smart objects that already exist is not restricted this way. What a Smart Object Is covers the difference.

The Free plan limit

The Free plan holds ten models. The count is in the bottom right corner of the file manager, and it counts models, not folders and not smart objects.

Reach the limit and the next create, or the next duplicate, opens the upgrade panel:

The Free plan includes up to 10 projects. Upgrade to Maker for unlimited projects, parametric export and Smart Objects.

Deleting a model gets you a slot back at once. The count is of live models only, so a model in the trash does not count against you, and the next create goes through the moment the delete lands. There is nothing to wait for and nothing to confirm.

What you do not get back is the space. There is no permanent delete and no empty trash, so the document you deleted is still on the server for its 30 days, still restorable, still stored. The counter frees up immediately; the disk does not.

Importing

Three routes, all of which take several files at once:

• Import on the toolbar above the listing.
• Import… on the right-click menu, when you right-click empty space inside a folder.
• Dragging files from your desktop onto the window. An overlay appears reading Drop files to import.

What Kapy accepts is .kpy, .kpycode and .step / .stp. Everything else is refused, file by file, with:

Unsupported file. Import a .kpy or .step file.

That message under-sells the picker, which does take .kpycode as well.

Import one file that becomes one model and Kapy opens it in the editor for you. Import several, or import a single smart object or .kpycode, and nothing opens: you are left in the file manager with the new rows in place.

Where an imported STEP lives

An imported STEP is stored inside the document rather than linked, which is why it counts against the document's own size ceiling: Importing a STEP File has the number and what to do when an import will not save.

STL and OBJ are not imported here

Drop an STL on the file manager and you get the unsupported-file message. Meshes come in from inside the editor instead, where the import can ask for the unit and tolerances it needs first. See Importing an STL or OBJ.

When it fails

Import runs one file at a time and stops at the first refusal. When the refusal is a plan gate, it is silent: hit the Free limit half-way through a batch and you keep the files that fit, the rest are never attempted, and no message appears anywhere in the file manager. The upgrade panel is the whole of the feedback, exactly as it is for a blocked create. A .kpycode on the Free plan behaves the same way, with the smart-object panel instead.

Everything else does report itself, along the bottom of the window, in the server's own wording rather than a translated one:

• Unsupported file. Import a .kpy or .step file. The extension is not one of the three.
• Invalid .kpycode The file is a .kpycode but did not compile. The compiler's own complaint usually replaces this text; read it, fix the source, import again.
• A smart object with that name already exists here A .kpycode name collision that was not an update in place.

If an import seems to have done nothing at all, look first for an upgrade panel you may have dismissed. Then check the folder you were in rather than the folder you dropped on, and check Recents, which lists everything that just arrived.

See also

• The File Manager: the three columns, folders and the trash
• Importing a STEP File: bringing a STEP into a document you are already working in
• Importing an STL or OBJ: the mesh route, which lives in the editor
• The Preview Column: checking and downloading a file you have just imported