Lesson 1 of 7
The canvas
Everything in Block Designer happens on the canvas — an infinite, grid-backed workspace where you place blocks and wire them together. Before building anything, it's worth a minute to learn how to move around it.
Pan and zoom
The viewport is unbounded, so you never run out of room. Use these to get around:
- Pan — drag with the middle mouse button, or scroll.
- Zoom — pinch on a trackpad, or hold a modifier and scroll, to zoom toward the cursor.
- The grid stays aligned as you zoom, so blocks snap to a consistent layout no matter how far in or out you are.
The block palette
The palette down the left side is your library of building blocks — 50+ of them, grouped into categories: Source, Math, Logic, Dynamic, Control, Hardware, and Sink. A signal generator, a gain, a scope, a GPIO pin — they all start here.
Tip: the palette is searchable. If you know a block's name, start typing to filter instead of scrolling through categories.
That's the whole stage. In the next lesson you'll place your first blocks onto it and connect them.