Finding and Placing an Object
To place a smart object, move the pointer to the icon column at the top right of the viewport and hover the SmartObjects icon. The window opens to the left. Pick a tile, move the ghost onto a face, and click.
Opening the window
The window is 430 px wide, is labelled SmartObjects, and appears in design mode whenever you are not in a sketch. It reveals on hover and closes 180 ms after the pointer leaves it, so a short overshoot on the way to a tile does not shut it.
This window is the only entry point. There is no smart-object entry in the right-click menu and none in the radial menu. If you are hunting for one there, stop: it was removed when the old picker dialog was retired.
Finding one
The window is a search field over a single-column list, with an icon-only strip of categories down the left.
- Search matches an object's name or its description, so a word from the description finds it too.
- The category strip is icons only; hover one for its name. When there are more categories than fit, the rest collapse into a
…More categories button. - Each row carries an 84 by 84 live preview, the name, the description and any calibration badges.
- Drag sideways on a preview to spin the model. It is a real three-dimensional preview, not a picture, and it is the quickest way to tell two similar objects apart.
- The refresh button in the header re-asks all three feeds. Use it after you publish or save something and it has not appeared.
The list is split into Your smart objects, Saved from store and From the store. Sections and categories with nothing in them are hidden rather than shown empty, so the window is shorter on a new account than in a screenshot. Two more rules trim it: an object currently open in the smart-object editor is dropped from its own picker, and while a placed item is open in the timeline the list narrows to objects of that item's kind, so that a replacement can actually fill the slot.
The From the store heading carries a Browse link to the full store. It opens in a new tab, on purpose: the document you are editing is holding unsaved state and the editor never navigates away from it. You can read a listing in full and come back to a placement still in progress.
The badges are not a quality mark
A row can carry badges such as Clearances: HOLE_COMP · FIT_SLIDE. Those name the calibration values the object depends on, which is useful when you are deciding whether an object will fit your printer's measured numbers. They are not ratings, and an object without badges is not worse. Real printed clearances explains what those values are.
What happens the moment you pick a tile
Picking a tile does more than load a preview, and one of its effects looks like a bug the first time.
Any placement already in progress ends, any pick mode is cancelled, and the face or region you had selected is captured and then cleared. The highlight in the viewport disappears. The selection was taken first, so the object still uses it; you are looking at a cleared highlight, not a lost pick.
Then, depending on the kind of object:
- Object and face pipeline start a cursor session. The ghost follows the pointer and snaps flat onto whatever planar face is under it. A face pipeline accepts only faces. An object with no face under the pointer falls back to a free drop on the world XY plane.
- Code-on-region either applies at once to the selection you had, which is what fill textures do, or starts a face or region pick if there was nothing selected.
- Code-on-body commits immediately when the document holds a single body, and otherwise asks you to pick the body.
Placing it
The ghost is the object's real geometry, read from its saved preview model. Nothing at all is drawn until that model arrives, so a beat of bare cursor before the ghost appears is the download, not a missed click. Once it is there the ghost tells you where you stand: normal while it can land, hidden where there is nothing to sit on, red when the position is not legal, and crossed by a highlight travelling over it while the object recomputes after a move.
| Gesture | What it does |
|---|---|
| Left click | Commits, but only if the button goes down and up within 4 px and 300 ms. A slower or dragged press is read as an orbit and places nothing |
| Wheel | Spins the ghost in 45° steps |
| Shift and click | Places and keeps going, appending copies. See Copies of One Placement |
| Tab | Cycles between candidate docks when a docking magnet is engaged |
| Escape | Cancels a fresh placement. A reposition of an already-placed object ignores it |
The 4 px and 300 ms rule is the one worth remembering. A click that does nothing is a click held slightly too long, or one that nudged the mouse on the way down.
A commit from the cursor does not open the popover. The item appears in the timeline on its own. To edit its parameters or move it, open it from there.
When it fails
Nothing appears and a toast says Smart object source failed to load. The object's definition could not be fetched, so no feature was created at all. Check your connection and press the refresh button in the picker header; if the object came from the store, it may have been withdrawn.
Any other message. That toast is the only failure the picker itself reports. Everything else arrives after the click, on the timeline item, and Versions and What Goes Wrong lists every one of those messages with its cause and its fix.
Placing the wrong thing entirely. Insert STEP and Insert mesh are separate features and are not in this window. If you are trying to bring in a supplier's file rather than a smart object, you are in the wrong place.
See also
- What a Smart Object Is: the four kinds and which of them needs a face
- Positioning a Placed Object: moving it after the click, and dimensioning it to host edges
- Copies of One Placement: Shift-click runs and what the copies share
- Selecting and Navigating: the orbit gesture the 300 ms rule is protecting