The File Manager

Find a model, move it somewhere sensible, and open it: press Ctrl / ⌘ + O in the editor, or click the header button marked Manage files… (⌘O), and the file manager opens in a new tab with your models, smart objects and folders in it. Opening a design from the manager works the other way round and replaces the manager tab, so use Open in new tab from the right-click menu, or Ctrl / ⌘ + Enter, when you want to keep both.

A brand-new account never sees this screen first: on the very first visit Kapy creates a Tutorial design and drops you straight into the editor, and the manager appears from the second visit onward.

Three columns

The left column is the tree. At the top sit two views that are not folders: Recents, the last thirty things you opened, and Trash. Below them, under the Folders heading, is your folder tree, and below that a SmartObjects block with one row per category you actually have something in. That block disappears entirely when you have none.

Single-click a folder in the tree to go into it; double-click expands or collapses it instead. That split catches most people once.

The middle column is the listing, with the search and sort controls above it and a floating band at the bottom carrying the only two large buttons on the screen: New Model and New Smart Object. The band hides itself in Trash and in a category view, because you cannot create anything there.

There is no breadcrumb. The middle column never tells you where you are and gives you no way up. Navigation is the tree, and only the tree.

The right column is the preview, which changes with your selection and is worth its own article. See The Preview Column.

The toolbar and mode tabs across the very top of the window are not yours to use here. They are drawn at half opacity and do nothing: they exist so the manager looks like the editor. The one live control up there is the print-setup selector on the right, and it is live because its calibration values are baked into anything you download.

Finding a file

The search box matches on name only, anywhere in the name, ignoring case. It does not look inside documents and it does not search parameters. Escape clears it.

Over on the right of that control row there is sometimes an extra dropdown, reading Any constant and titled Calibration constant. Pick one and the listing keeps only the designs that use it. It is the only filter in the file manager, and it lists exactly the constants your own live designs name.

Expect it to appear out of nowhere: it is not drawn at all until some design outside the trash refers to a calibration constant, so a new control turns up in that row the day you first build a printed fit. Real printed clearances explains what those constants are.

The sort control is one flat list of eight entries rather than a key plus a direction. Read the wording carefully: ascending is spelled "oldest first", so Date modified · oldest first puts the file you have not touched in months at the top.

Three view modes sit at the right of the control row: List, Small thumbnails and Large thumbnails. Only large thumbnails render the real 3D model; small thumbnails show a generic icon, so a file that looks thumbnail-less there is not broken, it is in the wrong view. List is the mode that shows dates, and the only one that marks a half-finished guided tutorial with a Guided badge. Your view mode and sort choice are remembered in the browser you are using.

Folders

Create one with the New Folder button, the right-click menu, or Shift + Ctrl / ⌘ + N. It arrives called New Folder with the name already selected, so type over it. Names run from 1 to 120 characters and must be unique among their siblings.

Moving is drag-and-drop and nothing else. There is no Move to… command in any menu. Drag files or folders onto a folder in the tree or onto a folder tile in the listing; hold the drag over a collapsed folder in the tree and it opens so you can drop deeper. Dragging onto Trash in the tree deletes.

Folders nest as deep as you like. Three moves are refused: the root folder cannot be deleted, nothing can be moved to sit beside the root, and a folder cannot be moved into itself or into anything inside it. That last one is wider than it sounds: a grandchild three levels down is as illegal a target as the folder you are dragging.

Folders cannot be duplicated. If one is anywhere in your selection, Duplicate goes dead.

Selecting and acting

Click selects one thing and drops the rest. Ctrl / ⌘ + click adds and removes. Shift + click takes the range in the order shown on screen. Clicking empty space clears the selection.

The toolbar above the listing is icon-only, so hover to learn what each icon is. Right-click gives you the same actions as a radial menu where the cursor is, and it only ever offers what your selection allows. Right-click empty space inside a folder to get the create actions and Import.

Right-click empty space in Recents, in Trash or in a SmartObjects category and nothing opens at all, because that menu is built for a folder and none of those three is one. Creating is not what is blocked: the New Model button in the band still works in Recents, and what you make lands in the root folder.

Smart objects you saved from the store behave differently from your own files. They are references, not copies: you can preview one and remove it from your saved list, but you cannot open, rename, duplicate or download it. One of them anywhere in your selection disables every action that belongs to an owner.

The keyboard

Plain Backspace does nothing, and there is no arrow-key navigation. Every one of these goes quiet while you are typing in a field.

Deleting, and what the trash is for

Delete takes effect at once, with no confirmation, whether it comes from the button, the right-click menu, the Delete key or a drag onto Trash. Nothing asks whether you meant it. What saves you is that deleting is not destroying: the item moves to Trash and stays there for 30 days, and Restore puts it back.

Restore is the Delete key again, or the Restore button, which is what the delete button turns into while you are in Trash. A restore attempted after the retention window has closed is refused:

Trash retention window has passed

There is no permanent delete and no empty trash. Nothing in the interface removes an item before its 30 days are up. If you were hoping to clear space by emptying the trash by hand, that command does not exist.

That is also why Duplicate matters more on the Free plan than it looks: with no .kpy download, no version history and no way to clear the trash, Ctrl / ⌘ + D before a change you are unsure about is the whole of your backup story. The copy is a model like any other, so it takes one of your ten: at nine models the backup itself is what puts you at the limit, and at ten Duplicate is refused, so the upgrade panel turns up at exactly the moment you were trying to protect your work.

When it goes wrong

If the drive itself will not load you get a banner reading Could not load your files. with a Retry next to it. That is a connection problem, not a lost file.

Everything else surfaces as an amber message along the bottom, carrying the server's own wording rather than a friendly one. The two you will meet are name collisions, A folder with that name already exists here and Name taken in target location. Both mean the same thing: pick another name, or move the item somewhere else first.

One rename case is worth knowing. Select a folder in the tree and press F2, and the rename box opens in the middle column. When that folder is not part of what the middle column is currently listing, the box appears nowhere at all and F2 looks broken. Navigate to the folder's parent first, then rename it there.

The status line along the bottom counts what you are looking at, tells you how many items are selected, and on the right shows your plan and how many models you have. On the Free plan that is a count against your limit; see Creating and Importing Files for what happens when you reach it.

See also

• The Preview Column: what the right-hand column shows and what it downloads
• Creating and Importing Files: making a model and bringing files in
• Saving Your Work: how a document reaches the server in the first place