Frames

A labeled box around a corner of the board. Drag its title bar and everything inside goes with it, so "the power supply" moves as one thing.

Drawing one

Open the part panel with the round + button or the A key. The Frame tile sits beside the sticky note under the Notes heading, out of the categories, because a frame is not a part. Searching for frame, group, box, section or area finds it.

Click the tile and a frame lands in the middle of the view. Drag it and the frame lands where you let go. Either way the label field opens right away, because a frame is drawn to be named.

Moving, resizing, naming

• Move. Drag the title bar. Everything wholly inside the box travels with it: parts, sticky notes, marks on the drawing layer, and any frame nested inside this one. The wires are laid again from the pins that moved, exactly as they are when you drag a part.
• Resize. Select the frame and drag any of the four corner grips. The opposite corner stays put.
• Rename. Double-click the title bar, or press the label and type. Enter or Escape ends it; both keep what you typed.
• Roll up. The chevron at the left of the title bar collapses the frame to its bar and opens it again. Nothing inside moves. The parts are still there, the box is simply out of the way.

What counts as inside

Whatever sits wholly within the box, worked out at the moment you start the drag. Nothing is stored as a membership list, so a part dragged into a frame belongs to it immediately and a part dragged out stops belonging, with nothing to keep in step. A part straddling the edge is not inside: a frame dragged past a neighboring circuit must not pick half of it up.

Two frames that overlap both claim what sits in both, which is what somebody who drew them that way meant.

Locked starters stay put

A part the document holds locked does not move with a frame drawn around it. The frame moves, everything else inside moves, and the teacher's starter circuit stays exactly where it was put, on every screen in the room, because the room checks each part that moves rather than trusting the browser that moved it. See assignments and submissions.

It is not a part

A frame carries no pins, is never wired, and is stored beside the parts rather than among them. The simulation never sees one: a board divided into frames builds exactly the netlist an undivided one does.

Everything else is ordinary

Frames are caught by a shift-drag marquee, and Delete removes the frame and leaves what was inside it. The box was the grouping, not the parts. Undo takes back a frame you drew, moved, resized, renamed or rolled up.

The layers panel has a Frames row at the top, so you can hide, dim or lock the whole lot while you work on the circuit inside them.

Where they turn up

Frames travel with the document, so they are in the save, in the export file, in a share link and on a project's page. They are in the picture too: a PNG or SVG export draws the frames with the circuit, because a frame is a label on the picture and that is why you drew one. See exporting PNG and SVG.

In a live room a frame is an edit like any other, so the box appears on everybody's board as you draw it. See rooms.