Workspaces
The built-in panel arrangements — Draw, Animate, Sculpt, Effects and Edit — how to save your own, and how resetting behaves.
Reference
- Menu
- Window ▸ Workspace
A workspace is a complete arrangement of panels: which are open, which are tabbed together, which column each sits in, how wide the columns are, which are collapsed, and where the tool palette is pinned. Switching workspace rearranges the whole screen in one step.
Window ▸ Workspace lists every workspace, with a checkmark against the active one. Tap one to apply it.
The built-in workspaces
Four workspaces ship with the canvas. Draw is the one a new install opens in.
The default. Tools and the brush on the left, layers on the right, the timeline along the bottom.
The left column is 244 points and holds just two panels: Tool Options above Color. Sub Tool and Brush Settings are inside Tool Options here (see below), so they start closed as standalone panels — they are still in Window ▸ Panels if you want them free-standing. The right column is 204 points and holds Layers (tabbed with Effect Controls) above Surface (tabbed with Grid Transform). The Timeline is docked along the bottom but starts collapsed.
The timeline is the point, so it opens tall and the side columns get out of its way.
The Timeline opens to 420 points at the bottom. The left column stays 244 points with Tool Options alone; the right narrows to 200 points and holds Layers, tabbed with Effect Controls. The brush panels and Color are closed.
Surface and Grid Transform take the right column and the timeline goes away.
The left column holds Tool Options; the right, at 204 points, holds Layers above Surface tabbed with Grid Transform. The Timeline is collapsed.
The particle browser and the effect stack, both open at once.
The left column leads with Particles, tabbed with Tool Options; the right leads with Effect Controls, tabbed with Layers. Both columns are 244 points, and the Timeline is open.
Animation ▸ Animate Workspace is a shortcut to the Animate workspace, sitting beside the timeline's own show/hide item.
Tool Options is one window per tool
In every canvas workspace the left column leads with Tool Options, and that panel holds everything for the current tool — including the sections that also exist as panels of their own. For Draw and Shape it opens with Sub Tool and Brush Settings folded in above the tool's own options, and Surface folded in below. Each of those is a collapsible section, and each is the very same view its standalone panel shows. Nothing is lost by leaving the separate panels closed.
Saved layouts win over preset changes
A workspace you have used is stored, and the stored copy is what loads. If a new build changes a built-in preset, a device that has already run the app keeps its saved version until you choose Window ▸ Workspace ▸ Reset This Workspace.
The editor workspace
The editor keeps its own workspace list, saved separately. It ships with exactly one.
Bins left, inspector right, timeline along the bottom, the program monitor in the middle. Media occupies the left column, Clip Inspector the right, and Sequence the bottom.
Neither the tool palette nor the QuickStrip appears in this workspace — the editor has no canvas tools.
Saving your own
Arrange the panels as you want them, then save the arrangement under a name.
Reference
- Menu
- Window ▸ Save Workspace…
Save Workspace… and the delete item are in the ☰ menu at the head of the command bar, under Window. The system menu bar's Window menu carries the workspace list, the panel list and Reset This Workspace, but not these two.
Opens an alert with a Name field: "Saves the current arrangement of every panel under a name you can switch back to." Confirm with Save. The new workspace becomes active immediately. An empty name does nothing.
Names the active workspace in the item itself — Delete “Layout A”. It appears only when the active workspace is one of yours; the four built-ins cannot be deleted.
Restores the active workspace to the arrangement it shipped with. Available in both the system Window menu and the ☰ menu.
Your edits are saved as you make them
There is no dirty state and no "save changes?" prompt. Every panel you move, every splitter you drag and every column you collapse is written into the active workspace as you do it. Switch away and back, or quit and relaunch, and the arrangement is as you left it.
This is why Reset This Workspace exists: it is the way back from an arrangement you did not mean to make.
Two things about names
Saving under a name that already exists does not replace it. Save twice under "Layout A" and you have two workspaces both called "Layout A" in the Workspace menu.
Reset This Workspace only restores a workspace whose name matches one it shipped with. On a workspace of your own — unless you happened to name it Draw, Animate, Sculpt or Effects — there is nothing to restore it to, and the item does nothing.
Focus mode
View ▸ Focus Mode is not a workspace, but it affects the same thing. It renders an empty layout — no columns, no tool palette, no QuickStrip, the canvas full-bleed — with the toolbar reduced to a single button once you start drawing. Turning it off restores the workspace you were in, exactly as it was.