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May 1, 2026 📐 Solid Ground: Origin Relative Datums & 3D View Commands

Higharc Release Notes

✏️ For Design & Drafting

2D view commands now work in 3D

  • Existing 2D view commands and manipulators now work directly in the 3D view, enabling a more consistent cross-view editing experience.

Solid Railings Support

  • Added support for solid railings, giving users more design flexibility for staircases and balconies. This replaces using balusters as a substitute for solid knee walls and also improves building generation speed.

Close the Active Options Panel to Increase Explorer Panel

  • Added a close button (X) to the Active Options panel, freeing up space in the Explorer panel.

New Origin Relative Datums

  • A new datum type that defines a fixed reference plane relative to the project origin (0,0,0) and can be shared across multiple building systems. This eliminates the redundancy of maintaining separate datum lists per system (e.g., a duplicated 'bottom of facade' and 'top of foundation' datum) — when a shared datum moves, every system referencing it moves with it.

    • Available for: Foundations, Facades, and Stair Systems.

    • Centralized management: Datums now live in a top-level Datums folder in the Explorer, where users can group, search, and maintain them independently of any specific building system. Each datum exposes a Usages list showing every entity that references it, plus Duplicate, Delete, and Inspect Relations actions.

    • Future Direction: Origin relative datums will be critical for townhomes functionality and will be extended to levels, openings, roofs, and all other building entities.

Interior Trim Control per Edge

  • Users can now enable or disable interior trim (baseboards, crown molding) per edge from the edge inspector, in addition to the existing per-room control. Trim must first be configured in Interior Trim Settings to appear in the 3D model.

Catalogs QOL Improvements: two new workflows make it faster to navigate to and create Catalog entities directly from the Inspector.

  • Go to Source: Hovering over an Inspector field that references another entity (catalog item, material, settings catalog, etc.) highlights the label in blue and reveals a 'go to' arrow. Clicking it selects that entity and opens its Inspector; use the back button to return to where you started. This replaces the inconsistent ad-hoc 'go to' affordances previously found in live plans and the active options panel.

  • Add New in-situ: When typing into a dropdown that references a user-definable Catalog, an

    Add New...

    option now appears if no matching item is found, letting you create a new Catalog entity without losing your place. The new entity opens in the Inspector, and the back button returns you to the previous entity. This replaces the prior 'add new' UX for entity tags and view overrides.

Fixes!

  • Fixed a bug preventing users from setting custom names for materials in Exterior Palettes.

  • Optimized model space annotation selection performance, resolving slowness reported in production.

  • Fixed inconsistent annotation behavior when adding annotations from the Inspector vs. the Command bar in production.

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