How to use this guide

This guide is a course. You learn Terrafold by doing: every chapter has steps to follow in the app, and the chapters build on each other. Read it from the start if Terrafold is new to you.

What you need

Terrafold on your computer, or the web version in your browser. Everything in this guide works in the trial; see Licence, trial and viewer mode.
A mouse with a scroll wheel. A trackpad works too, but orbiting and panning are quicker with a middle button.
About an hour for the first three chapters, and a few evenings for the garden project.

How the chapters work

Each chapter starts with what you will learn, then takes you through numbered steps. Along the way you find four kinds of boxes:

The garden project

Chapters 1 to 3 use small practice models. From chapter 4 on, you build one design: a small back garden, 12 m wide and 16 m deep, that rises 1.2 m from the house to the back fence. By the end of chapter 11 it has a shed, a fence, a patio with planters, a retaining wall and steps, a gravel path, a lawn with a pond, planting beds and plants that grow over the years.

The models in the figures were made with the same commands you use, run from scripts, and every picture is Terrafold's own: screenshots of the app, exported views and path-traced renders. The diagrams were drawn for this guide.

Conventions

Bold words are what you see on the screen: menus, buttons and panels. Tools ▸ Push/Pull means the Push/Pull item in the Tools menu.
Keys look like Ctrl + Z. On macOS, use Cmd where the guide says Ctrl, and Option for Alt.
Values in code are typed exactly as shown, such as 2.4m,1.8m.
Lengths are in metres. If you prefer feet and inches, type them with their units (8', 6"); Terrafold converts.

The other chapters at the end

Appendix A is a printable card with every default shortcut, and appendix B sums up the whole way of working on one page. Print them and keep them next to your keyboard.