3D scene

The 3D scene tab renders your machine’s frame system as an interactive 3D visualization on your machine’s page in the Viam app. Frame configuration is otherwise invisible: a JSON translation of {x: 50, y: 0, z: 110} tells you nothing about whether the gripper actually sits where the arm needs it. The 3D scene makes that spatial relationship visible so you can catch misconfigurations before a motion plan fails.

The tab reads your machine’s configuration and, when the machine is online, connects for live data. Each component’s frame appears as a set of coordinate axes positioned by its translation and orientation relative to its parent frame. Attached geometries render as translucent shapes, and point clouds from depth cameras render as colored point sets.

The interface

The tab has four main areas: a 3D viewport in the center, a World panel on the upper-left, a Details panel on the upper-right, and a Dashboard toolbar on top. The viewport is where you look; the other three are where you navigate, inspect, and change views.

3D viewport (center): The main rendering area. You can orbit, pan, and zoom to view your frame system from any angle. Components appear as labeled coordinate axes, with attached geometries rendered as translucent shapes. Point clouds from cameras render as colored point sets. An XY grid provides spatial reference.

World panel (floating, upper-left): A hierarchical list of every entity in the scene, titled World. The panel is always visible (it has no close button) but is draggable and resizable. The root node World mirrors your machine’s world frame. Each row shows an expand caret, the entity name, and an eye toggle (click the eye, or select the row and press H, to hide or show that entity). Click a row to select the entity; its details appear in the Details panel.

Details panel (floating, upper-right): Shows the selected entity’s spatial properties. The panel is draggable and anchors to the top-right of the viewport by default. It includes:

• world position (mm) and world orientation (deg, as an orientation vector x / y / z / th): the entity’s absolute pose in the world frame. Read-only.
• parent frame: which frame this entity is a child of. Editable when the entity is a configurable frame.
• local position (mm) and local orientation (deg): pose relative to the parent frame. Editable for configurable frames; these correspond to the translation and orientation in your frame configuration.
• geometry: four buttons (None / Box / Sphere / Capsule) plus dimensions (x / y / z for Box, r / l for Capsule, r for Sphere, all in mm).

The panel header includes a Zoom to object button (centers the camera on the selected entity) and a copy-to-clipboard button next to the Details heading that exports the entity’s pose and geometry as JSON. Entities that can be removed (for example, dropped PCD files) also show a Remove from scene button in the header.

Dashboard toolbar (top-center): Visible buttons, left to right:

• Orthographic / Perspective toggle — switch between an orthographic view (no foreshortening) and a perspective view. Keyboard: C.
• Add frames — opens a floating panel listing components that do not yet have a frame; click a component and then Add frame (singular) to attach a default frame to it. See Edit frames visually.
• Measurement (ruler icon) — activate to measure distance between two points you pick in the viewport. Click the icon again to clear.
• Measurement settings (sliders icon next to the ruler) — toggle x, y, or z under Enabled axes to constrain the second point to the enabled axes of the first.
• Logs — shows a count badge for errors/warnings from the scene renderer.
• Settings (gear icon) — opens the Settings panel.

Navigation controls

Holding ⌘ (or Ctrl) disables keyboard navigation, which is useful when you are editing a value in the Details panel.

Settings

Settings are grouped by what they affect: connection, scene decoration, point clouds, vision, widgets, and a few utility tabs. Click the gear icon to open the panel.

• Connection: polling rates for the scene’s data streams.
• Scene: toggle the grid, Object labels, hover detail tooltips, arm-model rendering (Arm Models), and line thickness.
• Pointclouds: set default point size and color, and enable or disable point cloud display per camera under Enabled cameras.
• Vision: enable or disable vision-service point-cloud entities.
• Widgets: show or hide the Arm positions widget and per-camera Camera widgets (a live camera feed floating alongside the 3D view).
• Stats: performance counters.
• Weblabs: feature-flag overrides (usually empty).
• VR / AR: only visible when the browser supports WebXR.

File import

You can drag and drop .pcd, .ply, or .json (scene snapshot) files directly onto the 3D viewport to load external data into the scene. This is useful for loading saved SLAM maps or point cloud captures for comparison with your live frame system.

How-to guides