An add-on panel is a piece you size yourself and place beside the aircraft's panel template: a center console, a switch panel, a subpanel. It can also sit on the panel itself as a blanking plate, holding the place of avionics you plan to install later. A design can have several. A piece works like an instrument: click it to select it, drag it, and use the tools on it. Instruments, switches and placards go on it just as on the panel, and every piece is in every picture of the panel: the ones you export, the one on the Equipment List, and the one sent with a CAD, Cut, Paint & Label request.
Add a piece. Click Add-on panel in the tool row (the square with a line across its foot). A new piece appears centered under the panel with its top against the panel's bottom edge, or against the bottom of the lowest piece, and its box opens beside it. Type its name and sizes; the piece changes as you type. Click Done, or press Enter.
- Width and Height: the body of the piece, in inches, as a decimal or a fraction: 12.5, 12 1/2 or 12-1/2. A new height keeps the top edge where it is.
- Center, from the panel's center: X to the right is plus, Y up is plus, measured to the center of the body, as for instruments. A piece under the panel has a Y below zero.
- Corners: one style and size for all four corners. Check Each corner its own to give each corner its own style and size.
- Square.
- Rounded: the radius.
- Beveled: how far the bevel runs along the top or bottom edge, then how far down the side. Leave the second empty for an even 45° bevel.
- Cove: a curve inward, as where the top of a center console flares out to meet the panel: the radius, then the flat land left at the edge, 1/8 in unless you type another. A cove is extra: it reaches past the width you typed by its radius, and the box says how wide the piece is across its coves.
Move the box out of the way. Drag it by its title bar. It stays where you put it for every piece after, until you reload the page.
Move a piece. Click it to select it, then drag it; a new piece is selected already. It snaps to the panel's edges, to other pieces and instruments and to construction lines, and its body snaps to the panel's center line, unless snapping is off. The arrow keys nudge it, and the tools in the tool row work on it: align, distribute, Center on panel (a piece is centered across the panel and stays at its height), Move / space, lock and unlock, group and delete. Pieces always stay under the instruments.
Blanking plates for future avionics. To hold a place on the panel for a unit you will install later, add a piece, type the unit's width and height (a Garmin GPS 175 is 6.25 by 2.02 in, for example), name it for the unit, and drag it to where the unit will go, or type its center. The plate keeps that spot clear while you lay out the rest and shows in every picture of the panel, including the one sent with a CAD, Cut, Paint & Label request. When the unit goes in, delete the piece and place the instrument there.
Change a piece. Double-click it. The box opens with its sizes; change them and click Done. Delete in the box removes the piece, and Undo takes back any change.
Save. Pieces are saved with the design, when you click Save and by the automatic save.
Room below the panel. When a piece reaches below the panel, the space below the panel grows to hold it, with 1/4 in to spare. The space is never made smaller by itself: a design with 3 in below keeps its 3 in for a 2 in piece, and deleting a piece leaves the space as it is. The Space above and below button on the design's card on My designs will not take the space from under a piece.
A copy of a design, and the working copy made for a CAD, Cut, Paint & Label request, keeps its pieces.