New

Select by property

Run Select by property from the command bar to select features by any property. Pick values from a list or set a numeric range, then replace the current selection, add to it, subtract from it, or intersect with it. For stacked buildings, you can match each piece separately or use their combined total.

Content Library: Shared with me. A new tab for everything shared with you. Quickly find content you have been given access to from any workspace or colleague.

​Shell flow node

A new shell node turns a line or outline into a band of a set thickness, placed inside, outside or centered on the line, with a choice of corner style. Use it for walls, paths and borders.

New preferences

Six new settings in Preferences.

• Lock or hide the active layer: The active layer can be locked or hidden, and making a layer active no longer unlocks or shows it. Drawing or pasting onto a locked layer offers to unlock it.
• Drag midpoint to insert and move: Drag a midpoint handle to add a vertex and move it in one go. Requires “Hover to insert midpoints” to be on.
• Toolbar position in Spaces: Docks the toolbar in spaces separately from projects.
• Keep layers and scenarios inside blocks: Features in a block keep their own layer and scenario. When this is off, blocks with mixed contents show a warning and offer Clear layers or Clear scenarios.
• Show exposed inputs on new nodes: Nodes added from menus and search use their exposed-input versions.
• ​Default line width and point radius: Preferences → New shapes sets the line width and point radius for lines, outlines and points you draw without a usage.

Improvements

Data Table

• Filters, search and sort agree in the table and on the map. Saved filters pick up the new rules without migration:
• is not and does not contain also match blank values, so "status is not archived" now includes features with no status.
• yes/no and true/false read as booleans in any case. Dates written YYYY/MM/DD or YYYYMMDD count as that day.
• Search is word-based and case-insensitive. Closing the data table clears it from the map.
• Invalid values in required workspace properties block New Project, Save As and Bulk Save, with the reason under the field.
• Add selection to project now asks before simplifying geometry. It shows how many features and vertices change, lets you set the tolerance for this import, and blocks imports the server would reject.
• Read Property colouring says how many features hold a value that isn't a colour and will draw black.
• Filter chips gain a remove button and an "Any of" chip for OR groups.
• Double-click a layer to activate its data table; double-click a draw layer to make it the active layer.

Drawing, blocks and flows

• Drawing gains optional snap to angles, perpendicular snap, Shift to snap closed, and an angle gauge on corner vertices.
• Pressing Space in an empty command bar repeats your last command, now including drawing a building or a specific usage.
• Create a usage from scratch from its type, instead of duplicating and renaming an existing one.
• Block patterns node evaluates blocks into the patterns the Pattern Book node takes, with an optional rotation per block.
• Draw bar dropdowns are resizable, and Draw offset line is back. Drawing a block from the block or flow manager highlights its tool.
• Editing a generative input node default opens a modal over the flow.

Content Library

• "Edit My Content" is now See My Content, and its tiles have the same Get/Open, details and edit actions as other tabs.
• Every Apps pack gets its own tile, so a second pack bundling the same app no longer disappears.
• Marketplace loads public layers only when you open the Layers chip.
• Home's Content Packs tab is greyed out for core workspaces, like Templates.

Accounts and interface

• Workspace options left the main menu in favour of Home, and Remove SSO providers and logout moved to the profile menu.
• New project and new space maps show place labels. Text buttons get a subtle border back.
• The context bar and flow bar collapse controls in a better order as they narrow.
• You can delete several layer groups at once. Deleting from any selected row now removes the whole selection.
• Vistas: 2D views can be resized and have their DPI set, and 3D views and scenes can show the camera frustum.

SDK & Apps

• switchLayout(layout) switches the shown layout by id or exact name, like clicking its tab.
• enableBottomBarIframe, disableBottomBarIframe and updateUiLayout({ bottomBarIframe }) work again as deprecated shims over app panels. The URL must share the app's origin.
• insertBlock docs now show placing blocks without user interaction via createRawSection(s).
• Apps can capture an image of a saved view at an exact size, in 2D or 3D.
• createProject now runs the same boundary checks as the server. Boundaries of 40,000–50,000 characters are blocked before saving instead of failing on save, and bulk create is all-or-nothing: if any project fails, none are created.
• Vista.details.camera.longitude and Vista.details.camera.latitude are deprecated.

Bug fixes

Generative

• Skeleton Editor no longer drops whole bands when a wing is exactly twice the offset wide. Footprint coverage on an L-shape is back to 100% from 30%.
• The Skeleton Editor no longer produces wrong shapes at some corners and intersections.
• Apartment layouts in existing projects no longer reshuffle. A v6 endcap change had moved units in 727 projects across 234 workspaces and pulled the built mix further from target; it is reverted.
• Mix Subdivision fixes two edge cases, now covered by tests.

Editing

• Floor to Floor accepts two decimal places again.
• Delete removes selected vertices while editing the project boundary, and undo/redo work there.
• Typing a distance to move an edge no longer changes the shape's opacity, and draped shapes respect their fill opacity.
• Escape closes the App Library and Layer Library wherever focus is, instead of acting on the map behind.
• Zooming in close in top view no longer cuts off buildings taller than a few metres.
• Boolean union now joins shapes it used to fail on, matching Shape builder.
• On small or narrow shapes, dragging an edge handle now stretches only that side instead of resizing the whole shape.

Interface

• The context bar drops building controls once a section stops producing a building.
• Number-key opacity shortcuts work again.
• Map search in the context bar shows its dropdown of locations again, and the block editor's top bar fits small screens.
• Pressing Enter in a text field no longer completes the shape builder.
• Number fields in the property editor accept values outside the slider range again, such as a negative base height.
• Apps no longer have requests rejected when they send them while still loading.
• The top view shortcut (T) works again after you start drawing a usage from the draw bar.
• Typing a space in the command bar no longer opens the keyboard shortcuts window.
• Project boundaries are made valid when saved, and permission checks on a deleted layer no longer error.

We're excited to present Giraffe 6.0, a complete redesign of the app. It brings a new interface, a rebuilt Content Library, new generative design tools, and many improvements across drawing, analytics and panels.

All you need to do is replace the /v4 with /v6 in your url. Try starting at app.giraffe.build/v6//work/home

Highlights

• A redesigned interface. Panels are dockable and resizable, with tabs and saved layouts. There's a new draw bar, a menu bar, new color themes, a Preferences window and a keyboard shortcuts screen. You now create projects directly instead of starting from a temporary scratchpad.
• A rebuilt Content Library. Workspace and Marketplace content are separate sections, with previews, tag management, table views and a My Content tab.
• New generative design tools. Garden lays out landscaping along a site edge. Wrap generates wrap buildings with garages, corridors, courtyards and units.
• Scenes. Capture the current map as a scene you can jump back to, and organize scenes into folders.
• A referral program. Refer someone and get a reward when their subscription starts.

Layouts

See What is a layout?, Panels and Layout Presets.

• Panels are dockable, resizable and grouped into tabs. Layouts save per project, can be reused as templates, and remember where the draw bar sits.
• Layout switcher in the top bar: click a tab to switch, drag to reorder, double-click to rename. Right-click a tab to rename, color or duplicate it, Save to My Layouts, revert it to its original layout, or delete it.
• Layout packs: save a layout with its apps as a pack and share it through the Marketplace, your workspace or a project. You choose which layouts go into an exported pack.

The Top Bar

See The Top Bar.

• Main menu: Home, Manage Workspace (Members, Teams, Workspace Settings, Workspace Properties, Subscription), Theme, Switch Workspace and Log Out.
• Project menu (called Space when a space is open): New Project or New Space, Open, Open Recent, Save as, Share, Export, Project Settings, Space Settings, Advanced (Use as template, JSON editor) and Delete Project.
• Edit menu: Undo, Redo, Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste to center, Duplicate selection, Delete, Select All, All Commands (a searchable command list) and Preferences.
• Map menu: 2D/3D, zoom, search, grid and Edit Grid, snaps, and map style. Render style (Flat, Simple, Silhouette). Force 2D/3D Hairline, Clip Below Base Plane, Toggle Label Visibility and Auto Orbit. Show Draw Bar and Show Context Bar.
• Apps menu: apps installed in this project, Giraffe apps grouped by category, and Browse apps….
• Help menu: Chat with us, Keyboard Shortcuts (Shortcuts / Hotkeys), Knowledge Base, Changelog, SDK Docs, About, Privacy Policy and EULA.
• Breadcrumb trail: Home, then your favorite space if you've set one, then the current project or space, with a switcher.
• Themes: five to choose from: Minimalist (the default), Minimalist Dark, Dark, Light and Dark Blue (Themes).

Home

See Home Overview and Manage Projects.

• A one-stop shop for your Giraffe items - open projects, create new projects, or manage files and other content (without having to open a Space or Project to access).
• Projects tab: sort, filter and choose which columns to show, including workspace property columns. Open or share a project from its row, batch edit project properties, use the audit toggle, and edit descriptions in place.
• Templates and content tables: templates are listed in user, team and workspace tables, where you can edit, unshare, or start a new project from one. Files and content packs have their own tables with thumbnails.
• Custom Home content: workspace admins can add custom HTML under the workspace name, including text, links and embedded video. Scripts, forms and styles are stripped out (Workspace Settings).
• Billing: upgraded the Stripe billing integration (Subscribe to a Self-Bill Plan).
• Fixes: an expired session now logs you out cleanly, with a clearer message when your account has no sign-in method left. Browsers without WebGL now get a "not supported" screen instead of a crash. Fixed display issues on the payment screen.

Projects

See Create a Project and Project Settings.

• New project wizard: draw your project boundary in the wizard, skip the separate naming step, or start from a template using that template's boundary. See Create a Project and Create a Boundary.
• Project Settings: Setup, Attachments, Snapshots, Backups and Other in one panel (Project Settings). You can upload several attachments at once (Project Attachments). Cloning and snapshot restores run on the server for better reliability, and camera views are now copied with a snapshot (Backups & Snapshots).
• Project Cleanup: removes empty draw layers and unused usages, flows, blocks, scenarios and properties. It can also clear analytics data and reset usage data (Project Cleanup).

Default templates

Giraffe now ships ready-made project templates. Pick one under Start with a template on Home, or from New > New Project.

• Industrial: a starting point for warehouse, logistics, cold storage and data center sites, with infrastructure, environmental and base map layers, dock and parking flows, and a proforma from yield to residual land value. Available in imperial and metric (Industrial Template).
• Residential: apartment, townhome and parking defaults for residential sites (Residential Template).
• Mixed Use: retail, office, hotel and residential defaults for mixed use sites (Mixed Use Template).

Workspaces with their own templates can hide the Giraffe ones in Workspace Settings (Manage Templates).

Drawing

• Draw bar (Drawing Toolbar UI): a two-row layout with a searchable command menu and an actions menu. Insert Block lists the current project's own blocks, with a shortcut to the block manager. Usage menus list the project's own Building, Landscape, Land Use and Road/Path usages. The Flow menu draws a shape already linked to one of the project's saved flows.
• New tools: Patch, Catmull-Rom spline and curve with radius; 3D primitives (box, sphere, cylinder, cone, pyramid, wedge); tape measure (length and area) and linear and area dimensions; push/pull, trim, shape builder, scale 1D, orient, mirror, flip and ramp; lasso select and eyedropper.
• Context bar: map controls, address search and the map style picker. It changes to match the active tool.
• Vertex Edit: click or box-select vertices, move several at once, delete them, add a vertex by clicking mid-edge, and snap to midpoints. Classic Draw Mode is available in Preferences (Vertex Edit Tool).
• Align and Extend: Align edge, Align feature and Extend line, with live snapping and typed distances (Offset, Align & Extend).
• Offset split: splits a geometry by an offset distance (Split and Trim).
• Move and rotate: base point move and rotate tools with live preview and snapping. Repeated copies and pastes keep your last offset until you deselect (Move & Rotate Geometries, Copy, Paste, Cut, Delete).
• Snapping (Snap Settings): always-on snapping, and a choice between snapping to raw or evaluated geometry. Smart vertex snapping and inference lines. Press Tab to lock an edge extension or axis, and hold S to snap while inserting an edge point. Shapes no longer snap to themselves while you edit them.
• Plus: draw tools stay active after you finish a shape. Edit Shape is in the right-click menu, along with a new Bake action. 2D line weights, including hairline (Line Appearance). Cmd/Ctrl shortcuts lift geometries up and down, and a hotkey sets fill opacity. Clicking where geometries overlap selects the closest one, with a picker for the others. Giraffe remembers draw tool options between sessions.
• Blocks (Edit a Block, Nested Blocks): Make Unique detaches a block from its shared definition. Edit a nested block directly, with breadcrumbs showing where you are. A command recalibrates the stack order of geometries, and a popup explains how forced levels pass through a block.
• Block fixes: inserted blocks now take the current layer and scenario. Blocks can no longer end up broken, and there's a cleanup for affected ones. Dragging a group within a block and deleting scenarios inside a block both work again.
• Isolation: choose the isolation fade amount, and the camera now frames the isolated block correctly (Isolate & X-ray).
• New Preferences window (Edit > Preferences): drawing options (stay in tool after drawing, midpoint snapping, remember properties, sketch colors); selection and layer options (bounding box and rotate handle, layer manager options); interface options (draw bar position, tab style, shortcut hints); and shortcut mode, including two-key chord shortcuts.

Content Library

See The Content Library.

• Separate Workspace, Marketplace and My Content sections, with previews for layers, apps and packs, tag management, and table views for layers and usages.
• Preview and download files from tiles, table rows and detail views. Drag an image onto a pack to set its thumbnail.
• Search filters content by map location, including in the featured and favorites sections.
• Marketplace items are grouped into category submenus. You can group content by type and pin favorites.
• The layer library table loads faster.
• Double-click a flow, block or usage name to rename it, and every reference updates. You can also duplicate flows, blocks and usages.

Flows and generative design

See The Flow Builder and Nodes.

New nodes

• Inscribed Circle: finds the largest circle that fits inside a polygon (Inscribed Circle).
• Largest Inscribed Rectangle: finds the largest rectangle that fits inside a polygon, at any angle (Largest Inscribed Rectangle).
• Edge-Aligned Inscribed Rectangle: finds the largest rectangle lined up with one of the polygon's edges, and can keep it flush against that edge (Edge-Aligned Inscribed Rectangle).
• Subdivide Lots: divides a larger site into smaller lots by a target frontage or area, and returns the spine lines it used (Subdivide Lots).
• Subdivide Rectangles: subdivides rectangular polygons into a grid of dwellings, with configurable spacing and dimensions (Subdivide Rectangles).
• Subdivide Mix: subdivides a site into parcels for a mix of dwelling types, generating site boundaries and building envelopes.
• Site Fill: fills a site with courtyard-style buildings while leaving the open space you need (Site Fill).
• Skeleton Editor: creates building massing with custom offsets, coverage and corridor options, and outputs edges, enclosures and endcaps (Skeleton Editor).
• Site Plan and Site Plan Parameters: generate a site plan of landscaping and roads along a site edge, the flow version of the Garden tool.
• Wrap and Wrap Parameters: wrap residential units and corridors around a garage to generate a wrap building (How to Draw a Basic Wrap Building).
• Modify Feature Property: adds to, subtracts from, multiplies, divides or sets a numeric property with a formula.

Breaking change: legacy generative features

• Legacy dendrogram generative features, the older generative geometries created before flows, are no longer supported in 6.0. Retired nodes with no replacement, like Instanced Group, are also unsupported.
• When you open a project that uses them, Giraffe shows an Unsupported project features warning listing what it found. Click Open in v4 to keep working with them there, or Continue anyway to open the project in 6.0 without them. Rebuild those geometries with the current generative nodes to bring them into 6.0.

Changed nodes

• The Instanced Group node is retired. Use the Insert Block node instead.

Flow editor

• Save a feature's current inputs as the flow's defaults, from the feature's right-click menu.
• The flow editor fits the graph to view when it opens, and the context bar has a toggle for flow handles.
• A find tool searches for geometries from the canvas or from flow nodes.

Layers and Scenes

• Updated Layer Palette for clearer settings and grouping options.
• Delete several draw and data layers at once (The Layer Palette).
• Fixed the active layer being hidden unexpectedly.
• Scenes: capture the map as a scene, with folders, drag-and-drop, and sorting by name or date. You can also set whether new layers show, hide or stay unchanged in existing scenes (What is a Scene?, Create a Scene).

Properties and Calculations

See Properties Overview and The Usage Editor.

• Property summary: totals for the selection: area, perimeter, height, levels, gross, net and saleable area, and dwelling count.
• Quickly Edit Content: the property panel links a feature to the block, layer, scenario or usage that defines it.
• Bake: bake a usage's fill output into placed geometry.
• New usages: Create new usages from scratch - no more clone-only workflow.
• Panel polish: the panel dims when nothing is selected, tabs have text labels, and property history has a cleaner view.
• Checkboxes: checkbox fields replace toggles throughout the grid, subdivision, carpark and skeleton editors.
• Usage editing: usages are editable in the Content Library panel, with tags, defaults and a JSON editor. Giraffe warns you before you leave with unsaved changes.
• Solar: fixed internal core walls being treated as outer facade (Solar Overview).
• Site area and grouping: fixed scenario site area, and grouping on list-valued properties.
• Analytics counts: in-progress geometries are no longer counted.

Apps: Updates and Brand New!

From the Giraffe public marketplace.

• Paper (updates): generates permit-set-style drawings (plan, elevation, axonometric and perspective views, plus PDF export) (Paper Overview). New Render settings panel for silhouette line sensitivity and line weights, and a "Reset to default" button in Settings. Fixed buildings that don't split into levels losing their 3D mesh, and plan tiles ignoring the "Generic volumes" toggle.
• Spreadsheet (new, open beta): an Excel-style grid that sits next to your live model, so area schedules, unit mixes and residual land value calculations update the moment the project changes. Insert a ready-made schedule in a few clicks, or type a GI. formula such as =GI.TOTAL("grossArea", "usage=Residential") to link any cell straight to the project. Combine it with familiar functions like SUM, VLOOKUP, NPV and IRR, add charts and multiple sheets, copy and paste with Excel and Google Sheets, and import existing .xlsx workbooks (Spreadsheet Overview, Add the Spreadsheet App).
• gGIS (new, beta): do everyday GIS jobs on your site data without leaving Giraffe. Open any GeoJSON layer as a table to filter, sort and add calculated columns, then join data from another layer or run buffer, dissolve, clip and difference tools. You can copy fields from a layer onto your drawn geometries, or turn layer shapes into Giraffe geometries with usages, with no round trip through QGIS, Esri or Excel (gGIS Overview).
• gPlan (new, beta): a toolkit of small, focused tools for urban planners, working right on your Giraffe model. Terrain shows rain runoff, sun hours and shadows on the ground, with a shadow compare mode, and can place buildings on the terrain and set their levels. Cross section cuts sections through the site, with dimensions and angle planes. Camera views sets precise camera positions by dragging in 3D, plan or section, or by typing exact coordinates. You can render them in a paper-style look and export every view as a PNG with a key plan, either as a zip or to your project attachments. Tree builds diagrammatic trees by height and canopy that you can place on your site or download as .glb (gPlan (beta)).
• Multi-Family Cockpit (new): pick Garden, Wrap or Townhomes, adjust the deal, and watch the site plan generate live. Compare scenarios side by side with a summary chart and table.
• Industrial site planner (new): sketch or import a lot, mark the drive and parking edges, and get the largest footprint that fits along with a parking layout (Industrial Template). Includes loading-dock previews and building measurements, and you can save a layout and reuse it on a different lot.

SDK updates

For teams building their own apps with @gi-nx/iframe-sdk. See the RPC functions and state reference in the SDK Docs.

• Panels: apps can open, close and list their own panels (openAppPanel, closeAppPanel, getAppPanels) and update the layout (updateLayout). New appPanels state reports where each of your panels is, and the UI state now includes the active layout's panel tree. (RPC functions)
• Map camera: read and set the camera with getMapCamera and setMapCamera, and subscribe to the new mapCamera state for center, scale (metres per pixel), bearing, pitch and 2D/3D mode. (Map navigation)
• Blocks and groups: enter and exit block edit mode and group edit mode from an app, and check which one is active. (Blocks)
• Layers: remove several layers at once, rename layer groups, and expand or collapse them. (Layer tree)
• Flows: new calls for the flow drawing overlay and for listing the flow handle node types. (Flows)
• Hosted apps: create, update, delete and list the apps hosted in your workspace. (Workspace)
• More state: apps can now read the project's scenarios and attachments, the active draw tool and selection mode, and typed lens properties. (State types)
• Security: the SDK now only accepts messages from the Giraffe window that hosts the app.
• Removed: the bottom-bar iframe and secondary app overlay calls are gone, along with the old left/right bar sizes in the UI state. Apps that used them should open a panel instead.
• Build with AI: build a Giraffe app with Claude Code and the Giraffe SDK skill.

For a long time, every new project in Giraffe started the exact same way: a blank map, and a blank slate. We built it that way on purpose. Flexibility felt like the safer bet, don't assume what someone's building, just give them everything and let them figure it out.

Spotting what needs fixing

We look at three things together:

• Usage patterns. Anonymised data on how people actually move through Giraffe, no personal info, just where people click, pause, or get stuck.
• Support conversations. Every chat with GiraffeBot, plus every direct conversation Holly and Adam have with customers.
• Direct feedback. Calls and check-ins with the people using Giraffe day to day.

We also weigh what we find against established usability principles, like Jakob Nielsen's classic ten heuristics, so we're fixing things that genuinely help, not just reacting to noise.

For this one, the clearest signal came from a simple question we already ask at signup: what are you building? Residential, industrial, and mixed-use came back as the three most common answers by a clear margin, which is exactly why those are the three templates we built first.

What we found in the data

An open-ended blank canvas sounds like the flexible choice. In practice, it just moves the same setup work onto every single person, every single project, and the numbers back that up from a few different angles.

• People tried to configure this by hand, and it often didn't go well. Close to half of everyone who opened the usage editor to set up a building type from scratch left without saving anything. A similar pattern showed up in the content library: most people who browsed it left without importing anything, roughly 7 in 10. A smaller group found their own workaround, cloning an existing usage and adapting it by hand, essentially building a makeshift template because a real one didn't exist.
• A lot of people never make it to actually drawing. Meaningfully fewer people ever get to editing and refining geometry than get to creating it in the first place. Usage configuration sits right at that drop-off point, the step between opening a project and doing real work on it.
• The support data mirrors this exactly. Well over 1,000 conversations in a single period were procedural questions, people asking how to set up an industrial usage, or what to use for a warehouse, the kind of question a curated starting point answers before it's even asked. None of this reflects the product being broken. It reflects people arriving with a specific project in mind and having to navigate a generic library to figure out what applied to them.

What we built

New workflow-specific templates, built for multifamily, industrial, and mixed-use projects, preloaded with the usages, flows, apps, and layouts that actually fit that kind of work. Even the lightning bolt flows reflect the template's content, so nothing in the toolkit feels generic. It's all tailor-made for the workflow you've selected. Choose the template that matches the deal in front of you, and skip straight past the setup that a blank canvas would have made you do from scratch.

What this means for you

Less time recreating the same setup you've built a dozen times before, more time on the parts of the deal that actually need your judgement. A multifamily template won't make you sift through warehouse uses. An industrial template won't bury you in dwelling types. It's a small change with a compounding effect: every new project starts closer to real work instead of further from it.

Part of a series on the reasoning behind Giraffe 6.0. See also our posts on the new home screen, configurable layouts, project creation, properties palette, content consolidation, the rebuilt drawing toolbar, and drawing quality of life improvements.

When we first built Giraffe, we made a sneaky little assumption: that everyone thinks in maps. Open a map, find your site, start drawing. Great if you're hunting for a new site. Not so great if you're not. So a fair few people were stuck wading through a map just to check on a project they already had.

Spotting what needs fixing

Here's how we know it wasn't just a handful of people finding this awkward.

• Usage patterns. Anonymised data on how people actually move through Giraffe, no personal info, just where people click, pause, or get stuck.
• Support conversations. Every chat with GiraffeBot, plus every direct conversation Holly and Adam have with customers.
• Direct feedback. Calls and check-ins with the people using Giraffe day to day.

We also weigh what we find against established usability principles, like Nielsen's heuristics, so we're fixing things that genuinely help, not just reacting to noise.

What we found in the data

In this case, all data pointed the same way: people getting stuck in a Space when they just wanted their project list, and admins asking, in plain terms, for a simpler view of their own workspace.

• Getting your bearings. People kept getting lost, and not just a little. Chats with GiraffeBot show it clearly: more than 50 conversations where it had to explain "you're in a Space, that's why you can't draw." Not a one-off. A proper pattern.
• Finding what you've already done. Close to 180 conversations were just people trying to track down projects they'd already made. Most never even found the project switcher on their own.
• Doing things the way other tools do. Most software gives you a simple home screen, not a map. If site search isn't your main job, you shouldn't need a map just to see your own project list.
• Staying in control. Admins told us straight: "I just need to see all of our projects." Right now that meant building a whole space just for a list. Way too many steps for something this simple.
• Getting basic numbers without a spreadsheet. We've heard the same thing from bigger teams too, admins wanting an easy way to check basic numbers, like how many projects got made last month, without digging through spreadsheets or manual exports.

What we built

The new home screen shows your recent projects and quick actions the second you log in. No map required. Admins get a clear view of the whole workspace too, without needing to open a project first.

What this means for you

If your day is mostly about projects, not hunting for new sites, you don't need to think in maps anymore. Your recent work, your quick actions, everything you need is right there when you log in. That includes your own stuff, your admin tools if you've got them, and your personal settings too.

This is one part of a broader look at what's changing in Giraffe 6.0. Curious about the thinking behind the changes? We put together a bigger-picture look at why we're making these changes across the whole product.

Read the full story →

Some of the best fixes are the ones you never notice, until they're gone. Nothing about drawing in Giraffe was broken. It just had small frictions that added up: control points only ever landing at the centre of an edge, no dedicated mode for reshaping what you'd drawn, no quick way to bump levels or base height without opening a panel.

Spotting what needs fixing

We look at three things together:

• Usage patterns. Anonymised data on how people actually move through Giraffe, no personal info, just where people click, pause, or get stuck.
• Support conversations. Every chat with GiraffeBot, plus every direct conversation Holly and Adam have with customers.
• Direct feedback. Calls and check-ins with the people using Giraffe day to day.

We also weigh what we find against established usability principles, like Jakob Nielsen's classic ten heuristics, so we're fixing things that genuinely help, not just reacting to noise.

For this one, there wasn't a single big red flag the way there was with some of the other 6.0 changes. It showed up as a pattern of small, recurring gripes, the kind of thing people mention almost in passing rather than filing as a proper complaint.

What we found in the data

None of these were "Giraffe is broken" problems. They were "this is more annoying than it needs to be" problems.

• The default should protect against mistakes, not cause them. Edit mode used to be the default, so an accidental click could add a point or drag one when someone meant to move the whole shape. More than a dozen conversations show the fallout: unintended changes with no clean way back beyond undo. Nobody names the mechanic directly, but the damage is clear.
• Precision shouldn't require a workaround. Adding a control point only ever landed at the centre of an edge by default, so placing one anywhere else meant dropping it there first and then dragging it into position, rather than placing it exactly right on the first click. Many support conversations touch on exactly this, and the usage data backs it up: active users trigger Edit Section close to 800 times a month on average, with the median edit firing within 5 seconds of creating a section, before they've moved on to anything else. Precision needs to be available in that same instant, not after a workaround.
• Small adjustments shouldn't need a detour. Well over 150 messages across dozens of conversations asked about setting levels and/or floor-to-floor. At least ten people asked where the properties palette had gone. Levels, floor-to-floor, and base height were the most-asked-about properties overall, almost always some version of "where is this" or "I changed it and something broke."

What we built

Scale and move become the default. Flip into edit mode to reshape an edge, and alt-click to drop a point exactly where you want it, not just the centre. New shortcuts drag levels and base height up in one motion, no detour required. Push/pull gets a spot on the draw bar as a bonus, alongside a new integrated command line.

What this means for you

Precision where you want it, without a workaround. A clear mode for reshaping, instead of guessing. Fewer trips out of the drawing flow for small, repeated adjustments. Nothing flashy, just drawing that's snappier, faster, and harder to get wrong.

Flows and Blocks from your project's content library are also coming to the drawing toolbar itself, so grabbing something you've already built is a click away.

Part of a series on the reasoning behind Giraffe 6.0. See also our posts on the new home screen, configurable layouts, project creation, properties palette, content consolidation, and the rebuilt drawing toolbar.

At the end of the day, real estate is just polygons on a map. A building is a shape. A driveway is a shape. A patch of grass is a shape.

But Giraffe didn't treat it that way; it sorted everything by type first. A driveway was infrastructure. A building was a use class. A patch of grass was its own category.

Classification is important for the data and calculations underneath, but it's a pretty confusing way to ask someone to start drawing.

Spotting what needs fixing

Here's how we know that typology-based drawing tools were actually getting in people's way.

• Usage patterns. Anonymised data on how people actually move through Giraffe, no personal info, just where people click, pause, or get stuck.
• Support conversations. Every chat with GiraffeBot, plus every direct conversation Holly and Adam have with customers.
• Direct feedback. Calls and check-ins with the people using Giraffe day to day.

We also weigh what we find against established usability principles, like Nielsen's heuristics, so we're fixing things that genuinely help, not just reacting to noise.

For this one, the pattern was hard to miss: people asking how to draw basic shapes, and usage data showing the same drawing mistakes happening over and over, right alongside each other.

What we found in the data

In this case, the pattern was hard to miss: people asking how to draw basic shapes, and usage data showing the same drawing mistakes happening over and over, right alongside each other.

• Letting you work the way you naturally think. People think in shapes, rectangles, circles, lines, not in Giraffe's internal categories. More than one person asked outright how to draw a basic rectangle. Simple as that sounds, the old toolbar didn't make a plain shape like that the obvious first step.
• Making it quick to draw the same thing again. We've heard this show up as wanting to draw several of the same thing in a row without resetting everything each time. People were working around it with things like the eyedropper tool, or drawing a throwaway shape off to the side just to copy its settings.
• Not making you memorise a whole system just to start. The old toolbar made you recall which category something fell under before you could even draw it. Is a driveway a road? A landscape feature? A building part? That's a lot of thinking before you've drawn a single line.
• Keeping your most-used tools close by. Nearly three out of four people opened the properties panel within five minutes of drawing something. Over 90 days, that added up to more than 70,000 edits. Properties aren't an afterthought, they're part of the same act of creating.
• Avoiding easy mistakes. People kept making the same two errors, wrong layer, wrong use type, then correcting them right after. One person put it well: "How am I supposed to know what kind of layer it is? I drew a 3D boardwalk and that's under the Infrastructure dropdown." We also saw people deleting drawing layers about as often as they made them, a pretty good sign folks weren't always sure what a layer was for until well after they'd made it.

What we built

The rebuilt drawing toolbar leads with plain shapes, polygon, line, point, instead of selecting from a categorized tool first.

With the pet palette, you don't need to already know how Giraffe classifies a use to start drawing. You can pick from a list instead of having to remember whether something counts as a building, a landscape feature, or a road. Search the same usage list no matter what type of thing you're creating, instead of a different setup for every category.

What this means for you

You'll sketch faster, because you're not stuck figuring out Giraffe's categories before you've even drawn the shape in your head. Less wrestling with the tool, more time actually exploring the design options that matter.

This is one part of a broader look at what's changing in Giraffe 6.0. Curious about the thinking behind the changes? We put together a bigger-picture look at why we're making these changes across the whole product.

Read the full story →

A handful of fixes landed this week to smooth out some rough edges across projects, scenarios, and flows. Here's what's changed:

• Content Library now imports usages correctly from "import from another project."
• Scenarios are now available in view-only mode.
• Fixed a crash when setting Type to Building Section with a scalar dwelling count. We've also added a warning in the property editor when a Type is set, with a button to clear it if needed.
• Baking flows no longer incorrectly writes dwelling units from the usage to the geometry.

Want to see what else we're working on? Check out our Giraffe 6.0 release series.

Real estate software has a tough job. It has to work for architects doing massing studies, planners doing site analysis, and developers crunching numbers on a deal, all on the same platform.

Giraffe used to have one fixed layout for everyone. It meant everyone was stuck working around a setup that wasn't really built for their job. The fixed layout was holding people back, and it needed to go.

Spotting What's Worth Fixing

Here's how we know wasn't just a hunch.

• Usage patterns. Anonymised data on how people actually move through Giraffe; where people click, pause, or get stuck.
• Support conversations. Every chat with GiraffeBot, plus every direct conversation Holly and Adam have with customers.
• Direct feedback. Calls and check-ins with the people using Giraffe every day.

We also weigh what we find against established usability principles, like Nielsen's heuristics, so we're fixing things that genuinely help, not just reacting to noise.

What we found in the data

In this case, the usage data was the loudest signal: constant panel switching, especially on smaller screens, backed up by a steady stream of "where do I find X" messages that pointed to the same root cause.

• Matching how people actually work. Different jobs need different tools. One person put it simply: "how do I use for site analysis." We saw dozens of messages like that just this year. Close to 200 messages asked some version of "where do I find X." A clear sign the old layout wasn't easy to navigate.

• Working without constant back and forth. People switched between panels more than four times a session on average, with more than a quarter of sessions clocking up five or more switches. Not choice. The layout getting in the way.
• Staying in control of your own setup. People on smaller screens switched panels around half again as often as people on big monitors. A fixed layout just doesn't work the same for everyone.
• Seeing more than one app at a time. This one's been on our radar a while, people wanting to view data or run a function from a couple of different apps at once, instead of only ever seeing one at a time.

What we built

App locations aren't fixed anymore. Create, split, and merge panels. Drag them, resize them, dock them wherever you need. Create multiple layouts in every project for different workflows. Your setup sticks around for next time too. Plus, a redesigned top bar makes getting around easier, no matter how you've set things up.

• Merge, split, and drag apps where you want them.

• Save multiple panel layouts in templates and projects to swap between different types of work.

• Only see what you use - remove what you don't!

What this means for you

Less time messing with your screen, more time doing the actual work. The analysis, the massing study, the client meeting.

Deep in site analysis? Put Map and Layers side by side. Meeting a client? Clear the clutter and show only what matters. Working from a laptop on-site instead of a big office monitor? The layout actually fits now, instead of you squinting to find things.

And once you build a setup you like, Giraffe remembers it. You shouldn't have to rebuild your canvas every single time you open a project. Nobody's got time for that.

This is one part of a broader look at what's changing in Giraffe 6.0. Curious about the thinking behind the changes? We put together a bigger-picture look at why we're making these changes across the whole product.

Read the full story →

This release brings two major additions — nested block editing and a new dwelling section type — alongside a batch of fixes across blocks, apartment layouts, and space navigation.

Nested Block Editing

Edit a block definition from inside another block edit!

The block editor header now shows a breadcrumb trail (Project › parent block › current block) with unsaved-change indicators at each level, click-to-rename on the current block, and context-aware Save & Return / Save & Exit buttons (Discard only appears when there are unsaved changes).

Entering and exiting nested edits is fully undoable, saving with no changes no longer rewrites the block definition, and a failed save (e.g. block too large) shows an error and keeps the edit open.

Dwelling Usage Type

A new "dwelling" type, selectable from the Usage Type dropdown, behaves like a building section but represents individual dwellings.

Assign a usage and the section counts as one dwelling per level or a fixed count (toggle in the new Dwellings editor), with per-dwelling residents, price, and parking rates; a warning appears if no usage is assigned. Dwelling sections participate in stacking, site clipping, the Urban dashboard, and Precinct scenario tables alongside regular building sections.

Other Updates

• A new info modal (ⓘ button on the Block property group) explains how block propagation modes work.
• The levels property now always propagates from block instances to their contents by default.
• Fixed an issue with the isTopOfStack property not calculating properly.
• Fixed mirrored block instances producing polygons with reversed winding order, which broke urban/analytics.
• Duplicating a project now keeps its scenarios, including section-to-scenario assignments.
• Auto-generated apartment mixes now use a seed derived from the outline's geometry instead of the feature id, so identical or copy/pasted outlines produce the same mix, and the mix no longer re-shuffles while dragging outline vertices.
• Dwelling-type slices in the Urban app's Residential pie chart are now colored with their usage colors instead of a generic palette.
• Fixed a coordinate-precision issue in apartment layouts (values were being rounded to the nearest meter) that made clicking and resizing apartment subdivisions unreliable.
• Fixed an issue where the "Draw Polygon" method in Lightning Bolt flows wasn't applying the flow
• Navigating from a project back to a space no longer re-zooms the camera — the view stays where it was.
• Fixed an issue with loading image features
• Fixed an issue where the solar preview would render above the actual building geometry instead of aligning with it
• Hover / left click select only chooses one lensed feature. Works for outline only polygon layers too (you used to have to click on the line)
• Fixed single-click selection not working on GeoJSON layers when using the lens tool
• Added the option to proxy WMS servers that don't natively support HTTPS
• Features whose image URL fails to load now show the broken-image placeholder instead of never rendering.
• Fixed the checkout Purchase button staying enabled over an empty payment form after the payment form reloads.
• Refreshed checkout styling: the payment form now uses a compact layout with fonts and colors consistent with the rest of the app.
• SDK calls to setIsolatedFeatures / clearIsolatedFeatures are now ignored (with a console warning) while a block edit is in progress, instead of corrupting the edit session.
• useGiraffeState('projects') stale value fix (SDK)
• Fixed an issue with project geometry created by SDK

This release focuses on stability and polish across the map, drawing tools, and workflows, with fixes for lens filtering, polygon merging, temporary layers, and parking layouts, plus a few new capabilities like always-on snapping and modify-property workflow nodes.

Drawing & Snapping

• Added an "Always on" snapping option — keeps snapping enabled by default and hold S to temporarily disable it (instead of holding S to snap). Find it in the snap settings!
• Fixed extrude end-of-line issue.
• Improved polygon feature-merger precision and reliability (higher coordinate precision, proper handling of ring closure and degenerate rings).
• Fixed right-click merge of surrounding polygons across tile boundaries.
• Faster, more reliable label placement on very large polygons.

Map, Layers & Styling

• Fixed legacy lens filters crashing the data table's set filter and causing them to diverge from map filtering.
• Colors now auto-populate correctly when styling a layer by a data property.
• Fixed lens (conditional/data-driven) styling not applying to multi-style and tiled temporary layers, including incorrect lens-table headers/formatting.
• Fixed temporary layers flickering or vanishing on quick view reloads; show/hide now updates reliably.
• Properties in the lens and selection panel now display in the correct configured column order with proper formatting.
• Improved lens-table filtering performance (no more lag while typing).
• Match lens / right-click outlines fixed.

Flow

• Added "modify property" and "modify feature property" nodes for applying math operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide, modulo, power, set) to numeric properties, including across lists.
• Fixed a crash affecting stroke dash and parking algorithms.
• Parking bays now lay out against the actual edges of holes/exclusions instead of a buffered offset.
• Fixed grouping of list-valued properties (e.g. scenarios) so each value is counted separately.

SDK

• Added updateLayerTreeVisibility for pushing layer visibility/opacity/group state changes to the map.
• Camera tilt/rotation from flyTo/fitBounds now works correctly when transitioning from 2D to 3D view.
• Project creation via SDK now rejects invalid layer trees with a clear error instead of corrupting the project.

Enterprise & Workspace

• Home app is no longer installed by default for Enterprise, but remains available in the app library to add/remove as needed.
• Workspace member list is now visible to all admins on the access-restricted screen, not just billing admins.

Reliability & Misc.

• Added a new command-line command to recalibrate stack order, fixing property values on geometries that get too high.
• Fixed engine status bar overflow on narrow screens.
• Fixed image feature opacity control.
• Minor UI tweaks to the block editor.
• Removed the ability to create a project directly on lines.
• Content pack import now validates layer structure and shows a clear error instead of silently breaking.
• Links are now only auto-detected when text starts with http://, https://, or www..