Learn/App & Interface/Files & data
File Picker
Updated v2.4.9At a glance
- One themed Open/Save dialog everywhere — local drives, network shares, and cloud storage side by side
- A preview pane and real thumbnails, so you can see what a file is before you open it
- Double-click to open images, video, PDFs and G-code right inside JetCad3
- File names are checked as you type — a bad character disables Save and tells you exactly why
- Names follow the strictest platform's rules, so files always transfer cleanly to Windows, USB sticks, and network shares
- Rename, cut/copy/paste, drag-move, new folders, and delete without leaving the dialog
- Delete goes to the Trash — and where a drive has no Trash, offers a confirmed permanent delete instead of failing silently
- Remembers your last folder separately for every kind of file
Every Open and Save in JetCad3 goes through the same built-in dialog — themed to match the app, identical on every platform, and equally at home on a local drive, a network share, or connected cloud storage. It remembers where you last were separately for each kind of file, so posting G-code, exporting a STEP, and saving a project each land back in their own folder.
Naming a file
The Save box checks the name as you type. A character that can't go in a file name — /, \,
:, *, ?, ", <, >, | — disables the Save button and shows a short note under the box
naming the exact character, so there's nothing to guess. The same check runs when you rename a
file or create a folder inside the dialog.
Names are held to the strictest common rules across platforms. That means a file you name on a
Mac never becomes uncopyable the day it needs to go to a Windows shop PC, a USB stick, or the
network share behind the plasma table: reserved Windows device names (like CON or COM1),
trailing dots and spaces, and over-long names are all caught up front, with the reason on screen.
Files that already exist with unusual names are unaffected — everything that opens today keeps opening. The rules apply only when a new name is being created.
Seeing what a file is
Click a file once and the preview pane on the right shows it — the picture, the first page of a PDF, the head of a G-code program — along with its size, dimensions and duration. The toolbar button collapses the pane, and it remembers whether it was open and how wide you left it.
Icon view fills in real thumbnails for images, video and PDFs as you scroll, cached so the folder is instant the next time you're in it.
Double-click and the file actually opens: pictures and video in a full viewer with playback,
PDFs in the built-in reader, G-code and logs in the editor, a .jc3 in a new tab. See
Viewing Images, Video & PDFs.
Managing files in place
Right-click any file or folder for Open, Rename (F2), Cut/Copy/Paste, Move to Trash, and Reveal in your OS file manager. Drag to move between folders, hold the modifier to copy, and create folders inline — all without leaving the dialog.
On Windows and Linux the dialog draws JetCad3's own themed folder and file-type icons instead of asking the OS — so folders on a network share look like folders everywhere, and the listing matches the app's theme on every platform.
Delete moves items to the OS Trash — press Del (or Cmd+Backspace on a Mac) or use the context menu, with a confirmation either way. Network and removable drives often have no Trash for the OS to use; where older versions failed silently and the file appeared undeletable, the picker now says exactly that and offers Delete Permanently behind its own confirmation, so files on the shop share can actually be removed. Anything that fails is reported per item — deleting never fails quietly.