Tools Panel

The tools panel is accessible from the Dash bar by through the Edit button. This panel is where you'll be editing all Dash tools. For instance, if you want to scatter objects, you'd go to the Scatter menu in the Dash bar, then click on Surface Scatter, and it would open the Tools Panel, then fill it with Surface Scatter's properties. If you select some objects you've scattered, their tool will become active in the Tools Panel, as you'll see all their properties.

Panel Features

Since the panel is selection-sensitive, new tools are pinned by default, which allows you to select objects that have tools, and pass them to the current new tool if needed. Click on that pin icon to unpin it.

Let's go from top to bottom and describe all the features in this panel. First, you'll notice that it always spawns at the center-right corner of your viewport, and scaling your viewport also changes its position to make it fit that place.

At the top-right corner, we've got an icon to close the panel, and a menu icon . Clicking on that icon will open a menu with a couple of options:

• View Tools: This will open a dropdown list showing all tools that are currently running in your scene.

• Hide All: This will hide the result (meshes from cable tool, scattered instances, etc...) of all Dash tools in your viewport. An easy way to quickly identify what's from Dash and what isn't.

• Show All: This shows all Dash tool results.

• Freeze All: Dash tools will update whenever their inputs change. For example, if you've got some cables hanging by a curve, moving that curve will update the cable geometry. Same with scattering; scaling or rotating the surface/ground you're scattering on will update the scatter. Freezing will block that process, and let you adjust your scene as you see fit, without Dash tools ever updating their generated actors.

• Unfreeze All: This will make all Dash tools update again when you change their properties or adjust actors they depend on in the scene.

• Show Execution Time: This will show you a small counter in milliseconds to the left of the "Tools Panel" text. When the active tool runs, that timer updates, indicating how much time Dash took.

• Move Right: Moves & snaps the panel to the right corner of the viewport, which is the default position.

• Move Left: Moves & snaps the panel to the left corner of the viewport.

• Move Top Right: Moves & snaps the panel to the top right corner of the viewport.

• Move Top Left: Moves & snaps the panel to the top left corner of the viewport.

• Detach Active Tool: This will open another panel that contains the active tool. Sometimes you might want to have a few panels open side by side when adjusting values, and detaching a panel will help you do exactly that.

• Close Panel: This will close the Tools Panel. You can reopen it by going to the Dash bar, then clicking on the Edit button.

• View Tools: This will open a dropdown list showing all tools that are currently running in your scene.

• Hide All: This will hide the result (meshes from cable tool, scattered instances, etc...) of all Dash tools in your viewport. An easy way to quickly identify what's from Dash and what isn't.

• Show All: This shows all Dash tool results.

• Freeze All: Dash tools will update whenever their inputs change. For example, if you've got some cables hanging by a curve, moving that curve will update the cable geometry. Same with scattering; scaling or rotating the surface/ground you're scattering on will update the scatter. Freezing will block that process, and let you adjust your scene as you see fit, without Dash tools ever updating their generated actors.

• Unfreeze All: This will make all Dash tools update again when you change their properties or adjust actors they depend on in the scene.

• Show Execution Time: This will show you a small counter in millisecond to the left of the "Tools Panel" text. When the active tool runs, that timer updates, indicating how much time Dash took.

• Move Right: Moves & snaps the panel to the right corner of the viewport, which is the default position.

• Move Left: Moves & snaps the panel to the left corner of the viewport.

• Move Top Right: Moves & snaps the panel to the top right corner of the viewport.

• Move Top Left: Moves & snaps the panel to the top left corner of the viewport.

• Detach Active Tool: This will open another panel that contains the active tool. Sometimes you might want to have a few panels open side by side when adjusting values, and detaching a panel will help you do exactly that.

• Close Panel: This will close the Tools Panel. You can reopen it by going to the Dash bar, then clicking on the Edit button.

Next, we've got the active tool's workspace:

The left icon will show you a dropdown of all available tools in your scene.

Dash different types of tools, each serving a specific purpose.

• Transient Tools: These are tools that are selection-specific. For example, if you select an object that has a Dash material or Blend material assigned to it, you can find the Material Edit or Blend Material tool in this menu. Same with editing a Dash camera; first make sure that your viewport is set to it, then you'll see the Edit Camera transient tool available in the tools list. Same for fog, too.

• Regular Tools: These are tools like Surface Scatter, Decal Scatter, Road Tool, Terrain Tool, etc...

• Compound Tools: These tools are empty vessels of sorts, and they can store properties from regular tools. You could for example have a complex "Road in Forest" workflow that involves Surface Scatter for the trees near the road, Path Scatter for the lamp posts, Decal Scatter for the road cracks, Road Tool for the road itself, etc... And a compound tool would help you assemble all the most useful properties of that setup in one place. If you've used Unreal's Material Editor before, think of this like an instance parameter where all your exposed parameters can be easily edited. Compounds are explored in practice in our quick guide.

• Reference Tool: In a given scene, you can have one reference tool, which allows you to create properties that can be used in multiple tools. To continue on our "Road in Forest" example, it's likely you're going to have a width for the road, and you'll want to have all those tools knowing about this width. References are how you do it. We discuss them in a practical case in the quick guide. Think of this tool as more like a storage facility for all your properties that are shared between multiple regular tools.

I can't find the material tool

First, make sure that you select one or multiple objects that have a Dash material. Megascans & PolyHaven assets have those when you import them from the Dash Content Browser. Same for fog cards and Blend Materials. With your object selected, open the Tools Panel, then click on the menu icon (with 1,2 numbers drawn on the icon) to view all active tools in your scene. You should see under the "Transient Tools" category an Edit Material option. Click on it, and you'll be able to adjust the material. PS: Dash materials are just regular UE materials; you can also adjust them from the usual Unreal Engine material instance panel.

How to create a Reference Property?

You can make one from scratch or create one from an existing property.

• Right-Click on any given property, then select the Convert to Reference option. This will create a reference property that has the name, value and range of the property you Right-Clicked on. From there, you can double-click on the property's name to change it, and Right-Click on another property to assign this new one to it.

• To make one from scratch, open the tools menu from the Dash Tools Panel, then you'll see all the way down either "Reference Tool" or "Create Reference Tool". Click on either one, then the Tools Panel should switch to the reference tool view. There, you'll notice a + plus icon that you can click on to create any property type you want. You can double click on a property's name to change it, and right-click on it to adjust its range in case it's a float/integer. Right-click is also where you can delete it. To assign it, go to your regular tool, like Surface Scatter, and right-click on a property of the same type. For example, if the reference property you created is of type float, you could use it to adjust the Max Scale property in Surface Scatter. Right-Click on Max Scale, then select "Assign Float" or whatever the name of your property. Right-click on the property again to find the option to remove it.

What can I do with compound tools?

Compound tools can be thought of like a hub for properties that are coming from multiple tools. Soon, we'll give you the ability to export them and their dependencies, making them interactive content generators, basically.

Next to the tools list, you have the name of the current tool. This one's fairly straightforward: Double-click on it to rename it, and that's about it. The name always shows up in blue, to indicate that it's the active tool. Similarly, hovering over icons will switch their color to blue, to indicate that you're above them/their option.

Next to the name, we've got the Active Tool menu. This one contains options that are specific to the tool you're currently editing, whilst the tools menu we discussed before is global; as it has options to hide all tools, or freeze all tools, etc...

• Create Preset: This option allows you to create a preset from all the current property values you've set up. When you click on it, the preset panel will open up, and you can give your preset a name and description, and also decide if you want it to ignore objects used in the tool, in case you'll be using it in other scenes for example.

• Select Results: Selects the result of the tool. If the active tool generates cable meshes, this will select them in your scene. If it generates instances, this will also select them.

• Reset Properties: Resets all property values of the active tool.

• Execute Tool: Runs the tool. This will force an execution of the tool, unless it is frozen.

• Hide Output: Hides the result of the tool. If you click on it, then open the menu again, it'll have an option "Show Output".

• Freeze Tool: Freezes the tool from any future updates. If you open the menu again, it'll show "Unfreeze Tool" instead.

• View in Explorer: Open the folder in which the source code of this tool resides. Dash tools use a lot of C++ and other binary libraries, but their core logic is laid out in Python, which makes them easy to tinker with.

• Delete Tool: Permanently deletes the current tool. This won't delete its output, just the tool itself, meaning it won't be parametric anymore. This action is not undoable.

Another feature in the Tools Panel is the Favorites icon . In short, this allows you to set any property in the current tool as favorite, and clicking on that icon makes all your favorite properties appear. Some Dash tools have dozens of properties, and this is a quick and easy way of making the most commonly used ones available just a click away, without having to expand and collapse multiple groups. To set a property to favorites, click on its menu icon , then Add to Favorites. Once you set one property to favorites, a star icon will show up in where the tool name is, and you can use that icon as a toggle to show all properties or just favorites.

Next, there's a few dynamic options that may show up depending on the current context. First, if you're using tools like Road Tool, those will generate geometry, which uses a custom mesh type in UE5. You can bake those tools by clicking on the bake icon, which will permanently delete the tool, and convert their geometry to static meshes, which is the standard UE5 format. This icon will of course only show up on tools that generate geometry. A tool like Surface Scatter, which creates instances, won't have it. But Road Tool? Cable Tool? They will.

Two more to go: The Pin icon allows you to pin the current panel. If you for example generate cables, then scatter plants, then rocks, etc.. anytime you select any of those objects in your scene, the Tools Panel will refresh to show you the properties of the currently selected object. Pinning allows you to pin whatever's the current view, and ignore all selection-based changes.

And finally, the Detach icon will let you detach the current panel into a new floating panel, which has all the properties of the current tool.

Tool Features

A Dash tool typically has a set of properties, all residing in various groups. By default, you'll have a bunch of properties in a group called Base Properties. You can expand or collapse this group, and scroll down to view and expand/collapse other groups.

Dash tools have various properties, each serving a different purpose.

• Scene Container: This is a property that stores objects in the scene. It typically has a + icon, which adds to the property whatever object you've got selected. You can also just double-click on the property to add an object to it. The property has a dropdown icon , which lists all the objects contained it it, and a regular menu icon , from which you can select the contained objects, clear the property, set it to favorites, convert it to a reference, etc...
• Float / Integer: These are two classic numerical properties that. Floats are the most common type, while Integers can often be used for object count and other fixed values.

• Dropdown: This type contains various options to pick from. For instance, some tools have a dropdown to override your object's pivot to top, bottom or center.

• Boolean: This is a checkbox, and allows you to toggle a value on or off. An example might be switching off "Receive Decals" on a tool like Road Tool; which would make the road geometry not receive decals even if they're above it.

• Button: Some tools have a button that's used to start the tool, instead of the usual runtime execution workflow where adjusting any property updates the tool. The Channel Packer tool is one example, where you can set up all your channels, and once you're happy with the result, hit "Create Texture" to start the conversion process.

• String: Some tools have a textual field where you can write some text. In the tool Surface Scatter, you can mask your objects by giving it the name of your terrain material layer. This is where this property type comes in handy.

• Asset Container: This is a less common but still very useful type: It helps you to connect any asset from the UE content browser to this tool. For example, when using the channel packer you need to select a texture in the UE content browser, then in the tool, hit the + icon on one of the corresponding texture slots to query and add your current selection. It works exactly like the Scene Container property, except this one exclusively interacts with assets, not actors.