Interface and Layouts

The Maxwell Studio interface consists of four main parts: The Viewports, The Menu bar, the Toolbar, and the Panels. The toolbar and the panels can be customized and their size, placement and visibility can be changed.

See Viewports and Navigation, Studio Menu bar, Studio Tool bar and Panels subsections for an in-depth description of each area.

Customizing the layout

Maxwell Studio’s layout is fully customizable. To open or close any of the panels you can either go to the Window menu and switch it on or off, or right-click on the title bar of any open panel and choose the panels from the menu. Please note that in order to open another viewport, you have to chose this option from the Window menu, or press the shortcut key Ctrl+1 (The Ctrl key in Windows corresponds to the Cmd key in Mac OSX, so wherever the Ctrl key is used on a shortcut, Mac users should use the Command key).

Moving and docking panels

Panels can be moved to another place by clicking their title bar and simply dragging & dropping them in another area of the layout. The layout will automatically re-shape to allocate the new window. This makes it very fast and easy to configure a layout.

Creating tabs of panels

Panels can be grouped together in tabs by dragging and dropping a panel on top of another panel, allowing you to easily switch between panels by clicking on their tabs. Some tabbed panels will switch automatically. For example, if you tab together the Color Picker panel and the Texture Picker panel, the tab will switch automatically to the Texture Picker panel when you click a texture chip in the Material Editor panel.

Detach a panel

Panels can be detached from the main layout by clicking the icon in the title bar. Once a panel is detached, it cannot be re-attached to the layout by moving it; you have to click the detach button again to put it back in the same place it was before it was detached.

Resizing a panel

You can resize a panel by clicking on its border and dragging it. When you move the mouse close to a border the cursor will change to indicate that you can click/ drag to resize it.

Opening a new floating panel

Open the Window menu and choose which panel you wish to open as a floating panel. Dock it by clicking on its title bar and drag & drop it into an area of the layout. If the panel was previously part of the layout but had been closed, it will instead re-appear where it was placed last in the layout.

Removing a panel

Panels can be removed by clicking the cross icon. The layout always reconfigures automatically, expanding or stretching the other panels.

Splitting a panel

Panels are flexible and can be split horizontally or vertically by dragging and dropping another panel on them. This allows new panels to be added to the layout. This is the usual way to build a new layout.

Saving and loading your layout

Saving a layout

Once you are happy with your custom layout, save it using the Save layout option in the Window menu. The file will be saved as a .stlay file (stands for Studio layout file). It is recommended to save your layout files in the Maxwell/layouts directory so they are available in the layout switch dropdown - see below.

Opening a layout

Click the Load Layout option from the Window menu and navigate to the folder containing the .stlay file.

Quick switching between layouts

You can quickly switch between different layouts by using the drop-down list located in the top row of buttons. You can also switch layouts using Window > Layout, choosing from the list of available layouts.
Make sure to save your custom layouts in the Maxwell/layouts directory on your computer so that they appear in the list. You need to restart Studio for a newly saved layout to appear in the list.

Setting a custom layout as default

Saving any layout as “defaultlayout.stlay” to the Maxwell/layouts folder will make it the default layout when Studio is launched. It is recommended that you first rename the “defaultlayout.stlay” file in the Maxwell folder if you later wish to reload the original default layout.
A set of layouts comes in a layout folder with the Maxwell installation. These layouts are focused on various specific uses of the software, like mapping, rendering or editing.

The following video shows how to customize the Studio interface.