Poly is an approachable 3D scene editor for arranging objects, exploring spatial ideas, and checking how a small scene looks from different views. Its workspace keeps the 3D viewport at the center, with the Scene hierarchy, object controls, materials, camera tools, assets, and history close at hand.
Poly currently keeps drafts and scene edits only in the active app session. A draft can look like a file in Poly's explorer, but its objects, transforms, materials, imports, and history are not saved for a later visit. Refreshing the app, ending the session, or opening Poly on another device will not restore that work.
A Visual Scene Workspace
Poly is designed around direct visual composition. You create scene objects, place them in three dimensions, organize them into groups, adjust their appearance, and move the view around the result. This makes it useful for lightweight mockups, spatial arrangements, and early 3D ideas where seeing the composition is more important than defining engineering rules.
For measured parts and controlled geometry, use Blueprints. Poly answers “Does this scene look and feel right?” Blueprints focuses on units, dimensions, constraints, sketches, features, and the design intent that explains why a part has its shape. Poly and Blueprints both use 3D views, but they solve different jobs.
Begin with an Empty Draft
Open Poly from Apps while you are in the space area where the work belongs. Its explorer can browse Poly scene entries for that area and create a new local draft. Starting a draft requires standalone Poly access, Designer Pack access, or Engineer Pack access.
A new draft is deliberately empty. It contains no objects, lights, cameras, active selection, or command history. The visible grid and axes are guides rather than scene content, while reusable material presets are ready for the first supported shapes you add.
The editor then opens as a focused workspace. On desktop, the main editing tools sit beside the viewport and supporting panels open from the other side. The Scene panel can be collapsed when you want more room without clearing the current selection or scene.
The Scene hierarchy, Flutter Scene viewport, transform overlays, and Inspector remain synchronized around the selected object.
Build and Organize the Scene
Poly can create several kinds of local scene content:
The Scene panel is the structural map of the draft. Selecting a row keeps the viewport and Inspector focused on the same object. You can extend a selection across nearby rows, toggle individual objects into a selection, or drag a selection box through the viewport. Multi-object transforms preserve the objects' relative spacing.
Hierarchy controls support copy, cut, paste, duplicate, delete, grouping, and expanding or collapsing nested groups. Visibility hides an object and its descendants from the viewport and from selection there. Locking protects an object hierarchy from editing while still allowing it to be selected and inspected. Commands that would be unsafe for the current selection stay unavailable.
Object renaming is not ready. Poly shows Rename as unavailable instead of presenting a name change that cannot be saved reliably.
Position and Shape Objects
Move, Rotate, and Scale work through handles in the viewport. You can constrain an active change to an axis, turn snapping on for predictable increments, or enter an exact numeric value while the operation is active. Locked or otherwise non-editable objects remain visible without accepting these changes.
Poly also supports a few composition shortcuts that keep experimentation fluid:
Push/Pull is the current face-level modeling tool. It can change supported flat faces on unlocked cubes and planes by dragging or by using an exact distance. A plane can become a simple volume, and a cube can change depth. This is a focused operation rather than a general mesh editor.
Object, Face, Edge, and Vertex modes communicate the current selection posture, but broad face, edge, and vertex editing is not available. Poly is strongest at arranging supported objects and applying limited direct shape changes, not rebuilding arbitrary mesh topology.
Materials, Cameras, and Display Modes
The Materials panel provides named presets and color swatches for supported primitives. You can assign a different material to the selected editable shape and adjust its roughness or metallic value within the available range. Groups, lights, cameras, and imported references do not receive the same primitive material editing controls.
Camera controls change how you inspect the scene without changing its object hierarchy. Orbit, pan, and zoom support free exploration, while fit, focus, and reset actions help recover a useful view. Standard Front, Left, Right, and Top views are available, along with perspective and orthographic projection.
Display modes offer different ways to read the same scene:
Switching views, projection, or display mode does not rewrite the scene. If the 3D viewport cannot prepare or draw the current view, Poly shows an unavailable or error state and offers a retry where recovery is possible.
Rendered preview keeps scene geometry on the GPU-backed 3D path while removing editing guides for a cleaner inspection view.
Undo and Redo During the Session
The History panel records meaningful local actions rather than every pointer movement. Creation, transforms, Push/Pull, material changes, visibility, locks, imports, duplication, deletion, pasting, and grouping can appear in the history when supported by the action.
Undo and Redo move through those local commands while keeping hierarchy, object state, materials, geometry, and selection together. Beginning a new edit after an undo clears the abandoned redo branch, as you would expect in an editor.
This safety net has a firm boundary: History is neither a saved version record nor a shared activity log. It ends with the current scene session and is not synchronized with other people.
Import and Export with Clear Limits
Poly can validate one local .glb or .gltf file at a time. The current importer accepts GLB 2.0 or GLTF 2.0 files up to 50 MB. A .gltf file must contain its required data within the file; files that depend on separate buffers, images, or other sidecar resources are rejected. Empty, malformed, oversized, and unsupported files are also rejected with an explanation.
An accepted import creates a local reference in the Scene hierarchy. The imported mesh itself is not yet displayed in the editable viewport, and Poly does not upload or preserve the imported bytes for a later session. Import is currently a validation and reference workflow, not a complete asset-loading pipeline.
Local export is also intentionally partial. Poly can download a .gltf JSON file containing visible supported primitives and exportable groups, including their hierarchy, transforms, and basic material data. The result is useful as a limited handoff of supported scene content.
The export can skip hidden objects, lights, cameras, imported references, and other unsupported content. Poly reports how many nodes were exported and whether unsupported items were skipped. A GLTF export is not a saved Poly project: it does not preserve the complete draft, its full history, or everything that may appear in the Scene panel.
Desktop and Touch Use
Desktop offers the fullest editing posture, with dedicated tool rails, a docked Scene hierarchy, and Camera, Inspector, Materials, Assets, and History panels around the viewport.
Phones and tablets replace those desktop rails with local controls and a compact drawer. You can open the same supporting panels, then close the drawer to return space to the viewport. This is deliberately a lighter inspection and editing experience; precise multi-object placement and repeated 3D manipulation are more comfortable on a larger screen.
Know the Current Boundaries
Poly is ready for local 3D exploration within a session, but not yet for durable or shared production work:
If the current result matters, export the supported content before refreshing or ending the session, and review the export summary for skipped items.
Common Questions
Is my Poly draft saved when it appears in the explorer?
No. The current draft identity and its scene contents are session-local. The explorer row does not mean the objects, materials, imports, or history have been saved for a later visit.
Can another person edit the scene with me?
Not currently. Poly has no live shared editing, presence, collaborative history, or meeting integration yet.
Why does my imported model not appear in the viewport?
The current import flow validates supported GLB or embedded-data GLTF files and creates a scene reference. It does not yet load the imported mesh for display or editing.
Will export include everything in the Scene panel?
No. Export is limited to supported visible primitives and exportable groups, transforms, hierarchy, and basic materials. Hidden objects, lights, cameras, imported references, and unsupported items can be skipped; check Poly's summary after export.
Can I use Poly for dimensioned CAD work?
Poly can place objects precisely with transforms, snapping, axes, and numeric input, but it does not preserve CAD dimensions, constraints, or feature intent. Use Blueprints when measured technical geometry is the goal.
What should I use on a phone?
The touch layout is useful for inspecting a scene and making lighter edits. A desktop or larger tablet is the better choice for precise transforms, hierarchy work, and repeated object manipulation.