Workbenches

A workbench trims the feature-creation UI to one kind of work. Choose it from the Workbench column at the left of the File menu: one row per workbench, each with its icon, the current one highlighted. Built-in workbenches appear in registry order; installed plugin workbenches follow them. The choice controls:

• which features the Add new feature palette offers,
• which features the selection context bar offers when you pick geometry,
• which extra toolbar buttons and dock panels are on screen.

PMI also activates saved views while editing annotations, restoring the modeling camera and display state when you leave that mode.

The one rule worth remembering

A workbench is a filter over creating features. It never changes what the feature history executes, renders, or lets you edit.

A document full of sheet-metal features opens and works identically under Modeling: every feature is still listed in the History panel, still runs, and still opens its parameter form for editing. Only the "add something new" lists are trimmed. Switching workbench therefore cannot break a model, and you can switch at any time.

The fourteen workbenches

The built-in workbenches, in File-menu order:

PMI, Drawing, Diagram, PCB, Symbol, Pads, CAM, Instructions and Simulation create no features, so their Add-feature palette is empty. What each adds instead — panels, toolbar buttons and, for PMI, the actions strip's Annotations group — is in the matrices below. The four eCAD workbenches (Diagram, PCB, Symbol, Pads) also draw their editor in place of the 3D view.

How the choice is remembered

• Choosing a workbench row writes the id into settings and saves it, so it survives a reload.
• Saving a part embeds the active workbench id in the document, and opening that document restores it. A consequence worth knowing: switching workbench marks the document dirty, because the workbench is part of the saved file.
• A document saved without the field (an older file) leaves your current workbench alone — opening an old file never yanks you out of the workbench you are in.
• A restored workbench is session-scoped: it is deliberately not written back to the settings blob, which stays your boot preference. Your next explicit selection change persists as usual.
• An unknown or stale id (a file saved by a build that had a workbench this build does not) is stored raw and resolves to Modeling everywhere it is consumed. The file still opens cleanly.

Two things besides the File menu move you between workbenches. Importing a STEP file as an assembly into a document that was not already an assembly switches you to the Assembly workbench, because the structure tree and constraints panels are gated on it — unless your workbench already shows those panels (Assembly, Wire harness or All). And the Qualify pane's Symbol / Pads / 3D buttons carry a selected connection point to the workbench that draws it (3D is left alone when you are already in a 3D workbench). Neither switch is written back to your saved boot preference.

Feature matrix

Rows are the feature catalogue in palette order; a • means the palette and the context bar offer that feature in that workbench.

Totals: All 43, Modeling 35, Sheet Metal 10, Assembly 4, Wire harness 6, PMI 0, Drawing 0, Diagram 0, PCB 0, Symbol 0, Pads 0, CAM 0.

The rule per workbench:

• All accepts everything.
• Modeling accepts everything whose type code does not start with SM. and is not ACOMP.
• Sheet Metal accepts every SM.* code plus the three shared building blocks S (Sketch), D (Datium), P (Plane) — a sheet part still starts from a sketch on a datum.
• Assembly accepts exactly S, D, P and ACOMP.
• Wire harness accepts exactly S, D, P, SP, WP and ACOMP: waypoints and the splines that join connection points, on sketched geometry or placed components.
• PMI, Drawing, Diagram, PCB, Symbol, Pads and CAM accept nothing — what they make lives in the document's own pmi, sheets, diagram, pcb, symbol, pads and cam blocks, not in the history.

The filter matches the type code, not the short name: the corner treatments are SM.FILLET / SM.CHAMFER (short names SM.CFIL / SM.CCHM), which is why both land in Sheet Metal.

Panel matrix

Panels are claim-based: a panel is visible everywhere unless some workbench claims it, and then it shows only in the workbenches that claim it — plus All, which sees every panel. Wire harness claims the two assembly panels as well as its own, because a harness routes across placed components. Two panels are conditional (◦), claimed by nobody and shown only while the open document calls for them: Qualify while the part declares connection points, and Family table while the document is a family seed (.fbrep).

Switching workbench changes only which panels are on screen, never where they are. A hidden panel's tab disappears from its strip, the strip keeps its width, and the panel comes back in the same place. A panel pulled out into its own split takes the split with it while hidden, leaving no empty tab bar.

By default every panel is a tab in one full-height strip down the left of the window, in the order of the table above except that Constraints comes before BOM. Drag a tab out to split it off, or onto another tab group to stack it there; the arrangement is saved and shared by every workbench. A panel that a newer version of the app adds arrives as the last tab of the strip holding most of your panels, and the rest of your arrangement stays as you left it.

Opening any dialog — a feature, a PMI annotation, an assembly constraint or a sheet object, from a panel, the context bar, a toolbar button or its label in the 3D view — brings the panel that hosts it to the front of its group, including when you re-open one whose form sits behind another tab. The exception is a panel the active workbench does not carry: nothing moves.

Toolbar button matrix

The table lists every button. All's row is the union of every other workbench's; every row ends with the shared sketch tools; and PCB's row also borrows Assembly's Add component after its own. A button id leads with its owner's id and a dot (assembly.interference), and a shared one with sketch., so an id names one button wherever it is used.

Ribbon is the default toolbar style. Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Toolbar style selects Ribbon or Classic globally; the choice follows you between documents and persists through the user settings store.

Ribbon has three tabs in order: Home, View, Help. Home opens with the File group (New, Open, Save, Save As, Import, Export) and the Undo group (Undo, Redo), followed by every group the active workbench offers: its creation commands and its action and tool groups alike (Modeling's Reference, Primitives and the rest; Drawing's sheet, view and dimension tools; Schematic, PCB, Symbol and Pads editors' tools, including PCB's View group that switches between the schematic and the board). Nothing a workbench offers waits on another tab. View holds the display and camera controls. Plugin management is not on a tab: the Plugins and JavaScript rows sit under Settings in the File menu. Groups come from each command's registered ribbon path. Every group draws a border in the theme's stroke with its label inside, in the tab and again in More.

Each tab chooses its button sizes from the width it has. When every command of the tab fits Large, every command is Large, including the ones registered small. Otherwise each command takes its registered size: Large buttons pack from the left of their group, and runs of small icons wrap into rows (two inside the Large height, filled top to bottom) before the group grows a column wider. When that still does not fit, every command is small and wrapped, and only then do whole groups move into More. Overflow keeps their icons, labels, menus and enabled or pressed state. Command ids, shortcuts and dispatch are the same in both styles.

Classic keeps the compact wrapping primary toolbar and a separate creation strip below it. Group boundaries are separators. Its offered commands wrap onto additional rows rather than moving into ribbon overflow.

The shared File menu has two columns. The left column is the Workbench picker, one row per workbench with its icon. The right column, Document, lists New part, New family, New template, Open, Save, Save As, Import, Export, Document Properties, Settings, Plugins and JavaScript. Below both columns, when there are any, the Recent Documents run as a single column, each row with a thumbnail of the document at its left. New choices, recent documents and workbenches are flat sections, without cascading submenus. On shorter windows the recent list scrolls under the menu's height cap while the columns stay put; only a window too short for the columns themselves scrolls the whole menu. Properties, Settings, Plugins and JavaScript are owned by File and are not duplicated on a ribbon tab.

Modeling declares no buttons of its own. Wire harness declares one, and no Route button: routing happens on every rebuild.

Conditional buttons. A button offered only in some state says so in the Offered column, and All's row inherits the condition. Drawing's twelve sheet buttons join the row while a drawing sheet is open; the twelve sketch tools while a sketch is being edited, and the nine 3D sketch buttons while a 3D sketch is being edited. The armed draw tool draws pressed; the sheet buttons are momentary — each adds its object and opens its dialog. The describe_workbenches command reports what is offered right now as activeButtons, and pressing a button that is not offered is refused.

Shared buttons. Sketch mode is entered from a sketch feature's form, not created, so its tools belong to no workbench: they are appended to every row. The sketcher has the same tools wherever you switched from, switching workbench mid-sketch keeps them, and it has no strip of its own; see Sketch.

The workbench actions toolbar

In Classic, a second strip directly under the primary toolbar shows the active workbench's creatable features as one icon button each — exactly its column of the feature matrix, grouped by their registered ribbon paths. Within each group, commands retain catalogue order. Clicking one adds that feature as the Add new feature palette would (Assembly Component opens the insert-component modal) and brings the History panel forward to its form.

In a workbench that shows the Constraints panel — Assembly, Wire harness and All — the strip adds a Constraints group: one button per assembly-constraint type, with the constraint's icon and its name as the tooltip. It adds that constraint with its elements pre-seeded from the selection and opens it in the Constraints panel.

In a workbench that shows the PMI panel — PMI and All — the strip adds an Annotations group the same way: it adds that annotation to the active view with its references pre-seeded from the selection and opens its dialog in the PMI panel; with no active view it says so.

The strip is hidden while a sketch is being edited and during reference selection, and can be switched off with Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Show workbench actions toolbar (on by default, saved with your display settings). PMI's strip is the Annotations group alone; Drawing and the four eCAD workbenches, which offer none of the three groups, draw no strip.

Ribbon uses the same creation descriptors on Home, after its File and Undo groups. Reference always comes directly after Undo, ahead of a workbench's own group such as Sheet Metal or Assembly. The common modeling groups are:

• Reference: Datium, Plane, Sketch, Spline, Helix, Waypoint.
• Primitives: Cube, Cylinder, Cone, Sphere, Torus, Pyramid.
• Sweep: Extrude, Revolve, Sweep, Path Sweep, Tube.
• Blend: Fillet, Chamfer.
• Pattern: Mirror, Pattern.
• Synchronous Modeling: Push Face, Transform Face, Delete Face, Transform.

Datum, Plane, Sketch, Extrude and Revolve are registered Large, as are File's New, Open and Save; every other Home command is a small icon, so on an ordinary window Home keeps those Large and wraps the rest into rows beside them.

Clicking a creation icon on Home, on Classic's creation strip, or picking a feature in History's Add new feature search creates the feature with its reference fields pre-seeded from the current selection, exactly as the context bar's feature buttons do: a selected face becomes Extrude's profile, selected edges become Fillet's edges, and a selection the feature has no field for is simply ignored.

While a sketch is being edited the creation groups leave Home and the sketch's own tools (select, point, line, rectangle, circle, arc, bezier, freehand, trim, link external edge, auto-constrain) take their place as a Sketch group beside File and Undo; the group goes away when the edit ends. Classic keeps them in its workbench row.

The creation visibility setting also applies to Ribbon's Home commands. Neither renderer creates features while sketch editing or reference selection owns the shell.