Menus
How menus and the command surface work in Beam Bench. Where to find what.
Beam Bench's menu surface is leaner than traditional CAD apps. Most actions live in:
- Hotkeys: see Hotkeys reference. 189 commands have keyboard bindings.
- Toolbars: see Toolbars. Creation, Modifiers, Properties, plus the Color Palette.
- Panels: see Panels. The right-side panels host most contextual actions.
- Context menus: right-click on the canvas, on a layer row, or on a tab to access context-specific commands.
A traditional menu bar (File / Edit / View / ...) may be present depending on the build and OS. On macOS it appears in the native menu bar. On Windows / Linux it is in-window. The in-window menu bar also has a Language menu (see below) for switching display language.
Language menu
The in-window menu bar includes a Language menu listing every locale Beam Bench currently ships translations for. Pick one to switch the UI language immediately. The choice is persisted to your app preferences and applies to every panel, dialog, menu, and tooltip.
Locales available in the current build:
- English
- Deutsch (German)
- Español (Spanish, Spain) and Español, Latinoamérica (Spanish, Latin America)
- Français (French)
- Italiano (Italian)
- Português, Brasil (Portuguese, Brazil)
- Nederlands (Dutch)
- Polski (Polish)
- Čeština (Czech)
- Svenska (Swedish), Norsk bokmål (Norwegian Bokmål), Dansk (Danish), Suomi (Finnish)
- Magyar (Hungarian)
- Türkçe (Turkish)
- Ελληνικά (Greek)
- Русский (Russian)
- Slovenščina (Slovenian)
- 日本語 (Japanese)
- 한국어 (Korean)
- 简体中文 (Simplified Chinese) and 繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
The default is English. Translations are community-contributed; if a string is missing in your locale, the app falls back to English for that string until the locale is updated.
The command registry
Internally, every action in Beam Bench is a command. The command registry holds metadata (id, label, category, default hotkey, whether the hotkey is editable) for each one. The Hotkey Editor dialog exposes this registry.
The full list of categories:
- File: new, open, save, import, export, print.
- Edit: undo / redo, clipboard, select, convert.
- Tools: every canvas tool (select, draw, rectangle, ellipse, ...).
- Arrange: group / ungroup, z-order, flip / rotate, align, jog.
- Window: preview, zoom, side panels.
- Laser Tools: material / focus / interval tests.
- Preferences: settings, hotkey editor.
- App: quit.
See Hotkeys reference for the full table.
Context menus
Canvas right-click
Right-clicking the canvas (with or without a selection) opens a context menu with the most relevant actions:
- Copy / Paste / Duplicate / Delete.
- Group / Ungroup.
- Boolean operations (when 2+ shapes selected).
- Cut / Trace / Adjust image (when an image is selected).
- Arrange (align, distribute, order, flip, rotate).
- Lock / Unlock.
Layer row right-click (in Cuts/Layers panel)
Right-clicking a layer row opens layer-specific actions. Shift+right-click flashes the layer's objects on the canvas.
Layer header right-click
Right-clicking the table header in Cuts/Layers opens batch actions across all layers (enable / disable / invert output, show / hide / invert visibility, sort cuts last).
Searching for a command
The fastest way to find a command is the Hotkeys reference table, it lists everything by category with the default keyboard shortcut.
To customize, use Hotkey Editor, it has a search box to filter the 189 commands by label.
Related
- Hotkeys reference
- Hotkey Editor dialog
- Toolbars reference
- Panels reference
- Macros panel: for binding G-code sequences to your own hotkey