Working together in real time

On a Team or Enterprise plan, everyone who opens the same Thing works on it together, the way you would in a shared document. There is nothing to start or share: open the Thing and you are in.

See who is here

Everyone else who has the Thing open appears as a small avatar in the Thing header, next to the save status. Each person gets a colour, and it is the same colour on every screen. A dimmed avatar means the person is idle (no input for a minute) or away (their tab is in the background, or no input for five minutes). If more people are here than fit, you see a +3 style count.

Click the avatars to see everyone with what they are doing: commenting, measuring, asking the agent, reviewing a proposal, or viewing for viewers and reviewers.

Cursors and selections

When someone points at the model, you see their cursor on the model in 3D, with their name and what they are doing ("Sam · commenting"). The cursor sits on the surface they are pointing at. It moves with the piece when you explode the assembly or move a joint. A cursor that hasn't moved for a few seconds fades out.

What they select is outlined in their colour: faces and edges on the piece you have open, and a box around any other piece they selected.

Follow someone

Click a person in the header and choose Follow, or open ⌘K and type Follow. Your camera now mirrors theirs, the view gets a ring in their colour, and a small Following Sam label appears at the top. Press Esc, click ×, or orbit the model yourself to stop. Following is a good way to walk someone through a design: "look here".

Editing at the same time

Every change you make (a parameter, a recipe step, a piece, a connection, an accepted proposal) reaches everyone else within about a second. Nobody needs to reload, and nobody overwrites anyone else's work:

• Different things merge. If you change width while Sam changes height, both changes stay, on every screen and in the saved Thing. The same goes for different steps, different pieces, and different connections.
• The same thing: the first save wins. If you both set width at the same moment, the change that reached the server first is kept, on everyone's screen. The other person sees a small notice, for example "Sam set width to 100 mm at the same time, so your 120 mm wasn't applied", with a Use 120 mm button. One click puts your value back as a normal change, which you can undo.
• Deleted while you were editing. If someone deletes a step or a piece while you change it, the delete is kept and your notice offers Restore it. If you delete something that someone else just changed, their version is kept and you can choose Delete anyway.

Undo is yours alone. ⌘Z takes back your own changes and never anyone else's. If someone has since changed the same value again, that part of your undo is skipped, and a note tells you so.

Agent previews are private. The ghost preview of a proposal shows only on your screen. When you accept it, it becomes an ordinary change for everyone, and they see a note such as "Sam accepted 'Add a lid'".

Viewers and reviewers

Viewers and reviewers see everything live, including changes, cursors and selections, but they can't change the Thing. If an admin changes your role while you have the Thing open, the change applies right away: editing stops, and live updates keep coming.

If your connection drops

The save status in the header shows Reconnecting…. Keep working. Your changes stay on your screen. When you are back online, Solid Vibes fetches what everyone else changed in the meantime, puts your changes on top, and saves them. The usual merge rules apply.

On other plans

Presence, cursors, selections and following come with Team and Enterprise. On other plans you can still keep the same Thing open in two tabs or on two devices: a save in one appears in the other right away, and changes to different values merge. Only a change to the same value in both places shows the "This Thing changed somewhere else" banner, where you choose which version to keep.