Projects and parts
This is the one idea to learn first. Everything else in the product makes sense once it clicks.
A project is a mixed container, not a file
A project is not a single canvas or a single file like a .psd. It is a container that holds many heterogeneous parts side by side. One project can hold classic pages, an infinite-canvas scene with many frames, a slide deck, a video, and a board, all at once.
Think of it as many mixed files kept in one document, closer to a folder of separate Photoshop, illustration, and video-editor files than to one flat canvas. The editor loads only the part you are looking at onto the canvas, so a project with a hundred parts stays fast, switching parts is a tab change, not a reload of everything else.
The part types
| Part type | What it is | Editor guide |
|---|---|---|
| Page | A fixed-size design like a card, poster, or social post | Pages |
| Scene | An infinite, pannable canvas holding many artboard frames | Scenes and frames |
| Slide deck | A filmstrip of slides with transitions and a presenter mode | Slide decks |
| Video | A multi-track timeline for editing video and audio | Video overview |
| Board | A freeform surface for sketching and diagrams | Whiteboards |
Each part type has its own dedicated guide covering its tools in depth. Page tabs along the bottom of the editor let you add, rename, reorder, and group parts of any type within the same project. See Page tabs and groups.
There is no project-level export
Because a project is a mix of different things, there is no single artifact to export for the whole project. You do not export a project as one PNG, PDF, or MP4, there is no format that could represent a page, a video, and a slide deck all at once.
Instead, export always targets a chosen part: this page, this frame, this slide, or this video. Saving the whole project as a file produces a project archive, which is a backup you can reopen, not a rendered result. See Project file and import and Supported formats for the details.
Grouping parts
Related parts within one project can be organized into groups from the page tabs bar, for example every size variant of one social campaign, or every slide-deck draft for one pitch, kept together without leaving the project. See Page tabs and groups.
Step by step: building a mixed project
- Start from any format tile, say a Social Post page for a campaign's core image.
- Once it's open, click the + on the page tabs bar at the bottom of the editor and choose Infinite to add a scene, an infinite canvas for laying out every size variant of that campaign as separate frames side by side.
- Add another tab, this time choosing Slide to start a slide deck for presenting the campaign internally, or Video for a short teaser cut, or Board for a freeform planning surface. Each choice adds a new part of that type to the same project.
- Switch between them at any time by clicking their tabs, only the part you're looking at is loaded onto the canvas, so this stays fast even once you have many parts.
- Right-click a tab to create a group and drag related tabs into it, for example grouping every size variant of the campaign together, or moving a tab out of a group again the same way.
Common tasks
Add a specific part type. Click the + on the page tabs bar and pick from the five types offered there: a single fixed-size page, an infinite scene, a slide deck, a video, or a board. See Page tabs and groups.
See how a project breaks down without opening it. Open the project's detail view from the works hub, it lists exactly how many pages, how many frames across its scenes, how many slides in its decks, how many videos, and how many boards the project holds.
Turn a spreadsheet into many finished pages at once. Use the bulk builder, it works naturally with the part model since each generated row becomes its own page, not a layer inside one shared file.
Back up the whole thing, not just one part. Export a .cardcraft project archive from the editor's file menu, this captures every part, its groups, tags, and settings in one file you can reopen later. See Where your work lives.
Troubleshooting
- You're looking for a single "export everything" button and can't find one. There isn't one, by design, see There is no project-level export above. Export the part you mean, or save a project archive as a backup rather than a rendered result.
- A new tab doesn't look like what you expected. Confirm which of the five types you picked from the + menu, an infinite scene and a single page look similar until you start panning, and a board opens its own distinct tool set. See Interface tour.
- The project feels slow with many parts. Only the part you're currently viewing is loaded onto the canvas, switching a tab should stay fast regardless of how many other parts exist. If it doesn't, check whether the current part itself is unusually heavy, very large scenes or long videos are more often the cause than the project's total part count.
Why this matters
- Thumbnails, tags, search, and sharing all work on a part, not just the project as a whole. See Part-aware everything.
- A card in your workspace represents a project, and its detail view breaks that project into its parts, so you can see how many pages, frames, slides, videos, and boards it holds without opening the editor.
- Bulk operations, like the bulk builder turning a spreadsheet into many finished pages, work naturally because pages are already separate parts rather than layers baked into one file.