Custom elements

Author and import your own fixture and furniture symbols as .kalarelement files, including with the built-in online element editor.

The fixture and furniture catalogue ships with a large default set, but you can grow it yourself. A custom item is a .kalarelement file, the same format as the built-in symbols, just with its own extension so it’s recognisable in Files, AirDrop and Mail. Drop one into the right place and it appears in the picker next to the built-ins.

The online element editor

The quickest way to make one is the online element editor, a free, browser-based tool (desktop only) that runs entirely on your machine; nothing is uploaded.

Open an existing .kalarelement or any bundled .json symbol to start from.
Draw the top-down plan symbol on a live canvas with rectangles, lines, polylines, polygons, circles, ellipses, arcs and text, in the same outline / detail / hairline stroke styles the app uses.
Edit on the canvas: click to select, drag the handles to reshape, and use the on-selection rotate and scale handles (hold Shift to snap rotation to 15° / scale to 0.1 steps). Press Delete to remove the selected shape, and ⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z to undo and redo.
Work in real measurements: pick your unit (millimetres by default, or cm, m, or feet + inches) and every dimension is shown and entered at full size. The drawing stays true to scale, so what exports lands at exactly the right size in the app.
Measure anything with the one-off tape tool: drag across the canvas for a live distance read-out. It’s a scratch measurement only; it’s never part of the symbol or the export.
Fill a shape in its stroke-style colour (outline = black, detail = dark grey, hairline = light grey). The app draws symbols in these three shades, with no per-shape colour, so a filled shape paints solid in whichever style you chose.
Fix issues: warnings are written in plain language; click one to jump to and highlight the shape it’s about (for example, a shape that extends beyond the item footprint).
Export a ready-to-use .kalarelement file. If anything still has warnings, you’ll see a quick summary first and can export anyway.

Everything you make validates against the same contract the app loads, so what exports is what the app reads.

Two tiers: app-wide and per-project

Custom elements live on disk in two places:

App-wide, available in every drawing. Files under Documents/Elements/.
Per-project, available only to drawings inside one project. Files under Documents/Projects/<project>/Elements/.

Each tier mirrors the built-in split into furniture/ and fixture/ sub-folders (the file itself records which class it is - that’s what decides which picker it joins, the folder is just a tidy hint). Under the app-wide root, base/ is your own growing catalogue; sibling folders are “packs” you can hand to someone else as a folder.

Documents/
├── Elements/                     ← app-wide
│   ├── base/
│   │   ├── furniture/  *.kalarelement
│   │   └── fixture/    *.kalarelement
│   └── <pack-name>/ …
└── Projects/<project>/Elements/  ← per-project
    ├── furniture/ …
    └── fixture/ …

Which one wins

When the same id exists in more than one tier:

Built-in beats app-wide. A custom app-wide element can’t silently shadow a built-in id, that would break drawings that already reference it. Give app-wide elements their own ids.
Project beats everything, but only inside that project. The same id resolves to the built-in or app-wide symbol everywhere else. That’s how a client pack can re-skin, say, a sofa for one project without touching anything else.

Adding an element

From inside the app, open the Library tab, choose the Elements filter, and tap + to import a .kalarelement file. It lands in your app-wide library and shows up straight away. The same view lists every element you’ve added, grouped into an app-wide section and one section per project, and swiping a row deletes its file (built-in symbols aren’t listed and can’t be removed).

Via Files, AirDrop or Mail, drop a .kalarelement into one of the folders above. The catalogue refreshes automatically (changes deeper in the folder tree appear next time you return to the app).

To make an element project-specific, move its file into that project’s Elements/ folder with the Files app.

What an element captures

Each element records a few things:

whether it’s a fixture or furniture - this decides which picker it appears in.
an id, unique across fixtures and furniture, which is how placed drawings refer to it.
a display name, plus an optional category, regions and search tags.
the default footprint in metres (width × depth).
the top-down symbol, drawn around the item’s centre so it rotates and scales cleanly.
optionally a height and a 3D build recipe for the 3D engine (otherwise the item appears there as a simple box of the right size).

The online editor creates and edits all of this for you, no hand-editing required.