Exporting & sharing

Save and share drawings, export scaled PDF, PNG, JPEG and DXF, import rooms, export engine PDFs, CSVs and 3D snapshots, and share scans, presets and whole projects.

Kaleidoscope Plan shares through the standard share sheet on iOS and iPadOS - AirDrop, Mail, Messages, Files, iCloud Drive - and through a familiar Save dialog on the Mac, so your work goes wherever you need it.

Exporting and sharing a drawing through the system share sheet — Save, export and share through the system share sheet.

Saving, exporting and opening a drawing

The document menu lives on the right-hand rail: on iPhone it’s behind the ⋯ button in any tool; on iPad and Mac it appears beneath Undo/Redo whenever the Pointer tool is active.

Save writes the drawing back to its own file in place and shows a brief confirmation. ⌘S works on the Mac (also File ▸ Save) and on an iPad hardware keyboard.
Export opens a sheet where you pick a format. The native Kaleidoscope (.kalar) is the first option - a readable, pretty-printed copy named after the building. Beyond that you can render the drawing as a true-vector PDF, a PNG or JPEG image, or a DXF CAD file. Everything goes out via the share sheet on iOS/iPadOS, or a Save dialog on the Mac.

Exported .kalar files round-trip losslessly: placed items, wall layer stacks, drawing properties, wall links and the background tracing image all survive (the tracing image travels in the file but never prints on rendered exports).

There’s no Open command in the editor - drawings open from the Projects and Library tabs, and .kalar files from Files, Mail or AirDrop open straight into the app via Open With.

Exporting a drawing as PDF, PNG, JPEG or DXF

The four rendered formats turn your plan into a finished sheet or a CAD file:

Format	Best for
PDF	A true-vector sheet that stays crisp at any zoom and prints to an exact scale - the format to hand a client or contractor.
PNG / JPEG	A flat image to drop into a document, email or chat. Pick the resolution from 1× up to 4×; JPEG also lets you set quality.
DXF	A CAD interchange file your drafting software opens, with walls, doors, windows, openings, voids and text on their own layers, in real-world metres - so the coordinates come through at true size.

The PDF, PNG and JPEG renders share a set of sheet options:

Paper size - A4 up to A1, or Auto to let the app pick the smallest sheet your drawing fits on.
Orientation - portrait or landscape.
Print scale - choose a standard ratio (1:50, 1:100, and so on), or Fit to page. Fit to page never just shrinks to whatever fits; it snaps to the nearest standard scale-rule ratio that still fits, so the print lands at a value you can actually read off with a scale ruler - never an odd 1:32. A “Prints at 1:N” line under the picker tells you the real scale before you commit. If you choose a fixed scale that’s too big for the drawing on that paper, the sheet warns you (and suggests a scale or a larger sheet that would fit) and won’t export a clipped page.

DXF carries the real coordinates, so paper and scale don’t apply to it - it’s always at true size.

Border, title block and annotations

Two toggles control the chrome on a rendered sheet:

Border + title block draws a border and a professional title block in the bottom-right corner, filled from your drawing properties - title, drawing number, date, project, client and “drawn by” - alongside the resolved scale (1:N) for that print. (Fill those fields in Properties before you export so the block reads properly.) A separate Title block sub-toggle lets you keep just the border without the corner panel.
Annotations prints the sheet annotations you added with the Annotation tool - free text, the north arrow, the scale bar and your own drawing watermark.

These two toggles remember your last choice on the drawing, and you can still override them per export.

What never prints: the background tracing image and the faint background drawing overlay are screen-only tracing aids, so they’re left off every rendered export and DXF. Windows print as their real frame-and-glazing symbol and walls print with properly mitred corners, exactly as they look on screen. Every rendered output also carries a small “verify on site” note, so a print can never be mistaken for a contractual document.

Add a schedule page (PDF)

When you export a PDF, you can switch on an extra room / door / window schedule page. It appends one table to the end of the document - a row per room with its floor area and its door, window and opening counts, plus a totals row. It’s off by default, so a quick export never surprises you with an extra page.

What’s free and what’s full access

Kaleidoscope Plan is free to use, and exporting is where the free and paid line sits. The line is drawn per export action with export credits: a credit is one clean export of anything, used up the moment you export. The short version:

The native Kaleidoscope (.kalar), the .kalascan scan and the .kaliarchive project archive are your own data, so they’re always free and never watermarked, no matter what.
A PDF, PNG or JPEG exported on the free tier gives you a choice each time: a free watermarked sample, or spend one export credit for a single clean, watermark-free file.
DXF (CAD) and CSV (data) exports can’t be meaningfully watermarked, so there’s no free sample for them: each one needs full access or one export credit.
A 3D snapshot is free for everyone (more on its small corner badge under Engine exports).

Watermarked sample, or one credit for a clean export

When you export a PDF, PNG or JPEG on the free tier, the app offers you a choice:

a free watermarked sample (a faint tiled “KALEIDOSCOPE” wordmark across the sheet and a “NOT FOR COMMERCIAL USE” banner), or
spend one export credit to get a single clean, watermark-free file.

Credits are non-refundable, so the free sample is offered first and spending a credit is confirmed once more before it’s taken. A credit pays for one clean export, the single file you’re producing right then. It isn’t a permanent unlock: the next clean export of the same drawing, in the same or any other format, spends another credit. DXF and CSV work the same way, except there’s no free sample to fall back on, so on the free tier each one costs a credit.

Full access - a subscription or the one-off lifetime unlock - removes every watermark, makes every clean export free, and means you never see the chooser. See Pricing for what each option includes and what it costs.

While you’re on the free tier, screen recording of the editor is blocked, so a clean image can’t be captured around the watermark.

Importing rooms from another drawing

Import, pick a .kalar, then choose which rooms to bring in from a list (each shows “N walls · M doors · …”). The selected rooms are appended to your current drawing with fresh ids and a name suffix on any collision, your existing work is not replaced. Shared-wall connections from the source are dropped (you can re-connect with the snap-and-connect flow).

Engine exports

Each engine produces its own deliverable from its ⋯ menu (“Export PDF…”, or “Export image…” for 3D; Network & IT adds “Export CSV…” - Marketing also puts an Export button right in the toolbar):

Output	From	Use
PDF	Fire Escape, Fire Alarm Zone, CCTV & Security, WiFi, Network & IT, Deck Plan, Marketing	Print-ready deliverables with headers, legends and compliance footers
CSV	Network & IT	Device inventory and patch schedule for your spreadsheet or asset system
PNG	3D	A snapshot of the current 3-D view, exactly as framed and lit on screen

What fills the pages varies by engine: Fire Escape prints one page per floor; Fire Alarm Zone one page per “You are here” marker; WiFi one page per active band in your chosen view; CCTV & Security a single plan page (camera cones always drawn); Network & IT opens on the drawn plan/map and follows with six tabular reports; Deck Plan renders the graded vessel-deck plan; Marketing renders its whole multi-page document. See each engine guide for the full contents.

Every engine PDF fits everything you placed - a device, route or assembly point outside the building footprint is never clipped off the page - and your per-drawing layer choices (doors, windows, measurements, room names, furniture) carry into the print. The overlay engines can also stamp your logo bottom-right, added from the Photo Library or Files in the engine’s plan settings, alongside an editable compliance statement.

The overlay engine PDFs follow the same credit model as a drawing’s picture exports: on the free tier each one is a free watermarked sample or one export credit for a clean file, and full access makes them clean. The Network & IT CSV is a data export, so - like DXF - it can’t be watermarked and needs full access or one export credit.

The 3D snapshot is the exception, and it’s free for everyone. On the free tier it carries a small app-icon and “Kaleidoscope” badge tucked in the bottom-right corner (it never covers the view); full access gives you a clean snapshot. It isn’t credit-gated and never carries the diagonal licensing watermark.

Page sizes and regions

The device-engine PDFs (Fire Alarm Zone, CCTV & Security, WiFi, Network & IT) follow the active region - US Letter in the US, A4 elsewhere - landscape for plans, portrait for Network & IT’s report pack. Marketing lets you pick A4 or US Letter per document (defaulting to your locale). Fire escape sheets print on A4 landscape. Set the region in Settings.

Survey reports

A survey exports an A4 PDF report - an overview page with the marked-up plan, then a page per numbered marker with its photos and comments (a long comment simply flows onto continuation pages) - from the survey’s ⋯ menu. A survey report is a rendered deliverable, so it follows the same model as a drawing’s picture exports: on the free tier you get a free watermarked sample or one export credit for a clean file, and full access makes it clean.

A scan can be shared as a single self-contained .kalascan file. Capturing needs a LiDAR iPhone or iPad, but importing a shared scan works on every device - Macs and non-LiDAR iPads included.
A whole project - every drawing, scan, engine overlay and survey it contains, plus its custom elements - can be shared as one .kaliarchive file, ideal for backup or handing a job to a colleague. Export it from the project’s row in Projects; import via Import .kaliarchive… there. Archives round-trip across iPhone, iPad and Mac (turning an archived scan into a drawing still happens on a LiDAR device).
Marketing presets export and import as .kalemarketing files, so a colleague gets your page layouts too.
Custom elements (.kalarelement) import from the Library tab’s Elements section - or just open one from Files, Mail or AirDrop.

All five file types route straight back into the app via Open With; on the Mac, every export lands through a Save dialog instead of a share picker.

PDF headers and details

Two different sets of details fill the chrome on a PDF, depending on what you’re exporting:

A drawing’s own PDF / PNG / JPEG. Switch on Border + title block and the corner title block prints straight from your drawing properties - title, drawing number, date, project, client and “drawn by” - with the resolved scale. Fill those in under Properties before you export.
An engine PDF. The header and footer - document title, site name and address, installer or prepared-by details, revision - come from that engine’s plan settings instead, so fill those in there before you export.