Opening it
Select a part or a wire on the canvas and the panel opens beside it. It is a popover, not a mode: click elsewhere, or press its close button, and it goes. Selecting something else swaps what is in it.
A part
At the top, the part's name. Under it, one row per property the part declares in the catalog, so what you see is decided by the part and not by a list kept somewhere in the editor.
That means, for example:
- a resistor has a value in ohms;
- a capacitor has a value in microfarads;
- an LED has a color;
- a clock has a frequency in hertz;
- a pushbutton has a bounce setting, because a real button does not make one clean edge.
The values are part of the project. They are saved with it, exported with it and travel over a share link.
At the foot are Rotate and Delete, side by side, with their keys shown
as quiet hints rather than as part of the label: R and Del.
A board
A board gets one extra section: Firmware. Its program list holds the built-in example programs for that board, filtered by the board's own program format so an AVR image is never offered to a RISC-V board, and a note under it says what the chosen one does. Depending on the board, the list also has:
- MicroPython (main.py), on the Pico, the Pico W and the ESP32, ESP32-S3, ESP32-C3 and ESP32-C6 boards;
- CircuitPython (code.py), on the Pico, the Pico W, the Nano RP2040 Connect and the ESP32-S3;
- Assembly (no Arduino) starters, on the Uno, the Nano, the Pro Mini, the Pico and the STM32F411 (writing assembly);
- Upload ELF…, or Upload firmware… on the boards that also take a
.uf2or an ESP-IDF.bin(prebuilt firmware).
Choosing a built-in example is how you run something without writing any code. An uploaded image was not built from the files in the editor, so pressing Run runs the image rather than compiling the sketch. See the code editor and compiling.
Under the list is the board's way onto real hardware, such as Upload to board on an Arduino AVR board. Every way but the Arduino IDE steps is a Pro tool and carries a Pro tag on Free; Arduino IDE steps stays free on every plan. See send to a real board.
A Raspberry Pi has no list: its note says that Run starts main.py with
RPi.GPIO and gpiozero driving the header.
A wire
A wire has two things: a color, from the same eight swatches that pop up when a wire is drawn, and a label.
The label names the net, not the wire. Type SDA on one jumper and every wire
on that net shows SDA. Press Enter or move the focus away to commit it, and
clear the field to take the name off. There is more in
wiring.
A sticky note
A note gets its own panel: five colors, three sizes (small, medium and large), Edit text and Delete. There is more in sticky notes.
Locking
Where you own what is open, the panel also carries Lock (or Unlock on something already held), which holds the selection where it is for anybody else who opens the circuit, such as the students in your class. It does not hold you: a locked part still moves and changes for the person who locked it, and only shows a small padlock. A reader who may not take the lock off instead sees the fields switched off over one line saying why. See assignments and submissions.
While the operating point is up
With the DC operating point showing, a selected part also gets an Operating point section with its current, and where it came from.
Several things at once
With more than one part selected, Rotate and Delete act on all of them. Rotate turns each selected part 90 degrees about its own center.