Learn SolidVents features quickly through short video tutorials
New here? This clip runs the whole loop once: choose an arrangement, set the hole size and pitch with the mouse wheel, drop a controller on the canvas and drag it so the pattern follows, lock the pattern inside a boundary, then open Export and pick SVG, DXF or STEP. Every other clip on this page zooms in on one of these steps.
Use the mouse scroll wheel to quickly adjust numerical parameters in the panel. Hover over any numeric input field and scroll the wheel to change the value. Hold Shift while scrolling for larger steps (coarse, faster adjustment), or hold Ctrl for smaller steps (fine-tuning), so you can move fast and then dial in the exact value.
Click the "Canvas Zoom" button in the top toolbar to enable free viewport mode. Once enabled, use Alt + scroll wheel to zoom the canvas, and Space + drag to pan the view, making it easy to inspect design details.
When "Sync All Parameters" is enabled in the canvas panel, all parameters (spacing, radius, etc.) will scale proportionally when the canvas size changes, maintaining consistent visual proportions of patterns across different sizes.
"Flow Lines" fills the sheet with continuous lines instead of holes, and the gradient tabs are remapped to suit: "Width" makes the lines thicker or thinner around a controller, "Spacing" packs them closer or looser, "Bend" swirls them. On the "Direction" tab you draw one line, curve or closed shape and the whole field runs parallel to it (open ends extend forever; only one direction controller at a time), and "Corner Fillet" rounds every sharp turn it produces. The direction controller is free to try — exporting requires Pro.
Two rotations belong to the arrangement rather than the shape. In "Concentric" and "Spiral", turn on "Rotate to Path" and every unit turns to follow its ring or spiral — slots stop lying flat and line up one after another along the curve. In an array, "Cross-Row Spin" turns each row a little more than the one before so the whole sheet reads as twisted (at 90°, rows alternate between horizontal and vertical); "Spin By" chooses whether it accumulates by Row, by Column, or along both axes. Each unit spins in place, so positions never move.
The gradient controller supports three interactive controller types: "Point" creates a radial gradient effect from a single center point outward; "Line" produces a linear gradient along a straight line; "Curve" allows you to draw a free-form curve path with multiple nodes on the canvas, and the gradient follows the curve direction. Click directly on the canvas to add a controller, and drag to adjust its position.
Upload an image in the "Background Image" panel, then enable "Image as Controller" in the gradient controller panel to let the image's luminance drive pattern parameters: by default, dark areas apply the target value (such as hole size) while bright areas keep the base value, making it easy to create halftone-style imagery. Turn on "Invert" to have bright areas apply the target value instead, and adjust the mapping strength with "Contrast". The same mechanism also works for spacing, angle, and shape gradients.
Right-click on a controller node and select "Add Fillet," then move the mouse to adjust the fillet size and click to confirm. This feature smooths sharp corners at curve or line segment bends.
Click back on the point you started from to close a controller path. Right-click any segment of a closed controller and its outline can be swapped for exact geometry: "Regular Polygon" gives every side the same length, while "Proportional Polygon" keeps that regular form but stretches it to the box the freehand outline already occupies. A closed curve offers "Convert to Circle" and "Convert to Ellipse" instead. Draw roughly first, snap to exact geometry afterwards, without redrawing. The same menu also carries Add Point, Scale, Rotate, Center Shape and Sync, which mirrors this controller's geometry into the other gradient modes.
Draw a controller once and reuse it everywhere: right-click it, open "Sync" and tick the other gradient modes (Size / Spacing / Angle / Shape). The controller's position and shape are mirrored into those modes and stay linked — move or reshape one and its twins follow — while each mode keeps its own target value, range and advanced switches. Deleting a synced controller removes its twins in the other modes as well.
When "Unify Range" is enabled, all gradient controllers on the canvas share the same influence range. Adjusting the range of any controller will synchronize all others, making it easy to manage the gradient influence distance of multiple controllers uniformly.
When "Unified Value" is enabled, all gradient controllers share the same target value (such as the final value for size, density, or angle). Adjusting the target value of any controller will synchronize all others.
The fourth tab of the gradient controller, "Shape", blends the outline itself: far from a controller the holes keep their original point style, and the closer they get, the closer they come to the "Target Shape", with a smooth transition at every step in between. Place a controller, then pick Circle, Rectangle, Polygon or Star under "Target Shape"; each target's own parameters (sides, points, rounding) appear below it. With a rectangle target, the W / H button next to "Aspect Ratio" decides whether the hole diameter maps to the rectangle's width or its height. Controllers work exactly as they do on the other tabs — point, line, curve and range all apply — and when you drag a controller, the morphed area follows it. Shape morphing is free to try — exporting requires Pro.
When the point style is "Custom", the target isn't picked from a list — you draw it. Click "Edit target shape" on the "Shape" tab and the editor opens in its "Target" state, where you reshape the same anchors: move anchors, adjust handles, scale, rotate, or change the radius of fillets that already exist. The pattern then morphs layer by layer from the "Base" shape to the "Target" shape along your shape controllers, and the "Base | Target" switch in the toolbar lets you flip back to compare at any time. Because the morph moves every anchor from its base position to its target position, both outlines must keep the same anchors in the same order: the pen, new shapes, import and boolean operations are disabled in "Target", and if you add or remove anchors on "Base", that layer's target is reset automatically ("Reset target shape" does the same by hand). Layers set to "Fixed (Ignore Gradient)" don't morph. Shape morphing is free to try — exporting requires Pro.
In the gradient controller's advanced options, the "Fill Closed" feature allows the interior of a closed controller (a closed area formed by curves) to use the target value directly, rather than producing a gradient effect. Note: Points and lines are non-closed shapes and cannot use this feature. Advanced options are free to try — exporting requires Pro.
Two advanced switches for open controllers (line, curve, polyline). "Single Side" applies the gradient on one side of the controller only and keeps the other side at the base value; the swap button next to it flips sides. "Infinite Extension" continues the controller straight out from both end points, so a short stroke governs the full width of the canvas — and it combines with "Single Side". Closed shapes and point controllers have no open ends, so they are unaffected. Advanced options are free to try — exporting requires Pro.
"Random Dropout" is an advanced option of the size mode: inside a size controller's range, points vanish at random by the share you set, and everything outside the range is untouched. The button beside the slider cycles where they vanish — more near the controller, more toward the edge of the range, or evenly — and the dice re-rolls which points go; with "Hard Edge" on, the chance is the same across the whole range. It needs a size controller to act on, and the thinned-out area travels with that controller. Advanced options are free to try — exporting requires Pro.
The three controller tools draw freehand on the canvas. "Custom controller shape" in the advanced options opens the path editor instead, sized to the canvas and working in millimetres, so a controller can be an exact shape: build circles, rectangles, polygons and stars from the size dialog, or draw lines and closed outlines with the pen. Press "Import" and everything drawn becomes a controller of the tab that is open (single nodes and hidden layers are skipped). In "Flow Lines" mode only the topmost layer is imported, and it replaces the current direction controller. Advanced options are free to try — exporting requires Pro.
In the angle mode's advanced options, enabling "Symmetric" causes both sides of the controller to use opposite angle values, creating a mirror-symmetric angle gradient effect. Advanced options are free to try — exporting requires Pro.
In the angle mode's advanced options, setting "Increment" divides the gradient into evenly spaced steps at fixed angles, replacing the default smooth transition (set to 0 to return to smooth mode). When holding Shift + scroll wheel to adjust the center rotation angle, this value is also used as the increment unit. Advanced options are free to try — exporting requires Pro.
To address issues where a large number of holes causes CAD software to lag or fail during import, you can enable the "STP Split" feature to divide the surface into multiple smaller regions for separate export. You can set the number of rows and columns, and under "Split Packaging" choose whether the tiles come back as a "ZIP archive" (one .stp per tile) or as a "Single assembly" (a single .stp holding every tile as a sub-component). All files maintain absolute coordinates, so they automatically align precisely when imported into CAD without manual adjustment. This is a Pro-exclusive feature.
In the custom shape editor, turn on "Mirror" in the toolbar and every stroke you draw is repeated live into the other symmetric copies. The count goes from 2 to 12: 2 is a left–right reflection, while 3 and up is radial symmetry, one copy every 360°/N around the centre (3 makes a three-blade propeller, 6 a snowflake). Mirroring is non-destructive — the count is saved with the shape, so you can reopen the editor and change it later. Only "Apply Mirror" expands the copies into independent paths you can edit one by one, and an open path whose endpoints meet the mirror axis is stitched into a single closed path.
In the "Point Style" custom editor, each layer chooses how it answers the gradient. "Default (None)" scales with the group, like every other layer. "Independent Unit" works out its own gradient value from where that layer sits, so a multi-layer shape can respond unevenly. "Fixed (Ignore Gradient)" opts the layer out completely — useful for a frame that has to stay the same size while everything inside it grows. Select a layer to set it.
In the Custom Editor of "Dot Style," you can assign a "Boolean Role" to each layer to define how it stacks with the layer below, supporting boolean operations such as Union and Subtract. Combining different roles lets you build richer shape variations and composite designs.
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