Giraffe 6.0

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.