The Library

The Library holds reusable pieces that live outside any one document: components you want in every project, materials you keep reaching for, whole models worth keeping around. Save something once, insert it anywhere.

Open it with Window ▸ Library, the Library entry at the bottom of the tool rail, or ⇧L (from a text field or the menus, ⇧⌘L / ⇧Ctrl+L). On the desktop it’s a real window — resize it, put it on a second display, keep it open while you work. Items show as a thumbnail grid or a compact list; the toggle is in the header.

What a library item is

Every item in the library is an ordinary .hew file — nothing is locked away in a private database. Because items are plain files, sharing your library between machines (or people) is as simple as syncing or sending them, and any item can be opened as a document in its own right.

Where items live

On the desktop, the library is a folder on disk — Hew Library in your home directory by default; change it under Settings ▸ Folders. Put that folder inside a synced one (Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, Syncthing) and your library follows you to every machine.

In the browser, items are kept by the browser itself, on this device — private to this browser profile, and gone if you clear the site’s data. The item detail pane’s Download… hands any item back as a plain .hew file whenever you want one out.

In a browser with the folder-picker API (Chrome and Edge; Brave ships it turned off, but brave://flags → “File System Access API” enables it), you can do better: Settings ▸ Folders ▸ Change… binds the library to a real folder on disk. Items become ordinary files you can see and back up — the same layout the desktop app uses, so the two can share one folder — and a cloud-synced folder makes the browser library follow you too. The browser may re-ask permission for the folder after a restart; the Library window shows a Reconnect button when it does.

Items come in three kinds, which the browser sorts into categories:

• Components — a part saved from a selection: a chair, a hinge, a bracket. Saved as a component definition, so inserting one places an instance.
• Materials — a single palette entry, texture and all.
• Models — a whole document: finished work, a downloaded and cleaned-up import, anything self-standing.

The distinction is curatorial, not mechanical. Any item can be Inserted into the current model or Opened as its own document — the category only decides which action comes first.

Saving to the library

Select an object, group, or component instance and choose Save to Library from the action dock. You’ll be asked for a name — that’s all. Add keywords and collections later, in the library itself, where they’re easier to think about. A saved item inserts by the bottom center of what you selected — the natural grab point for placing it on the ground or a face. For a different insertion point (a chair by its back-left foot, say), place the drawing axes there before saving; a deliberately placed axes origin always wins.

To save a whole document as a Model item, use File ▸ Save to Library…. To save a material, select its swatch in the Materials panel and use its Save to Library button.

A thumbnail renders in the background after each save; a small progress note shows and resolves on its own.

Inserting

Click Insert on an item (or press Enter with it selected) and the browser closes: the item’s geometry follows your cursor as a ghost, snapping with the full inference engine — endpoints, midpoints, faces, the ground — exactly like Move. A yellow crosshair marks the item’s insertion origin. Click once to place it; Esc cancels. The whole insert is one undo step.

Inserting never links to the library file — it copies. Editing a library item later changes nothing in documents that already used it. Inserting the same component twice reuses the definition already in your document rather than creating “Chair (2)”: both placements stay instances of one shared definition, exactly as if you’d copied the first one.

Materials insert differently: Paint with this copies the material into the document’s palette and arms the Paint tool in one motion; Add to palette copies it without leaving the browser. A material already in your palette is detected and reused, never duplicated — the browser badges those “in palette”.

You can also insert without opening the browser: type an item’s name into the command palette (⌘/ / Ctrl+/) and choose Insert “…” — it goes straight to cursor placement.

Finding things

The browser searches names and keywords as you type. The scope chips narrow the grid to items already in this model (matched placements also get a blue dot) or recently saved. Collections in the sidebar are simple named shelves — assign an item to one from its detail pane.

The detail pane is also where you manage an item: rename it, add keywords, change its collection (collections nest with /, like Hardware/Fasteners, and you can create one right from the dropdown), re-render its thumbnail, reveal the file on disk, or delete it. Deleting an item removes the file — documents that already inserted it are unaffected, since inserts are copies.

Items remember which model they were saved from. If you’re sharing an item and would rather not include that, Remove Source Info (in the item’s menu or detail pane) scrubs it.

Limits

• A model item’s loose sketches and dimension annotations aren’t carried along by an insert (its solids, components, materials, tags, and guides are). Hew tells you when it skips them.
• Inserting is refused, with an explanation, while a component is open for editing — close the session first.
• Inserting is refused if it would multiply a document’s rendered component parts past one million. That’s a guard against runaway or hostile files, not a ceiling a real model approaches — a full theater model expands to a few thousand parts.