> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.tempoweave.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.tempoweave.com/help-by-menu-tabs/design-menu/profile-designer.md). # Profile Designer {% embed url="" %} ### What It Does Profile Designer is a visual sketchpad for designing **block profile drafts** — the block-level designs behind Summer & Winter, doubleweave, turned twill, Bronson lace, and every other unit weave. Instead of thinking thread by thread, you paint big squares where each square is a whole block, then let TempoWeave turn your design into a weavable draft through Block Substitution. A single profile design can become many different fabrics: the same painted design interpreted in Summer & Winter looks completely different from the same design in doubleweave, yet both come from one sketch. Profile Designer makes the sketching half of that process fast and fun, and shows you live whether your design fits your loom. *** ### Location * **Ribbon**: Design tab > Block Substitution group > Profile Designer button The window stays open alongside your drafts, and it remembers your design for the whole session — close it, study a generated draft, and reopen it to keep tweaking. *** ### The Design Grid Paint with the mouse: **left-click or drag paints blocks; right-click or drag erases.** Each painted square is one block-sized cell of your design (the profile drawdown). As you paint, the **letter row** under the grid updates live: columns that are shaded identically belong to the same block and share a letter (A, B, C…), exactly as block designs are lettered in weaving literature. Each block also gets its own color in the grid so you can see block boundaries at a glance.
#### Grid Size Set the design's width and height in blocks (4–40 each). Shrinking crops from the right/bottom edges. #### Block Colors Checkbox Checked (the default), blocks are tinted by identity. Uncheck it to render every painted square black — the classic graph-paper profile look, useful for checking the finished design. The letter row keeps its colors either way. *** ### Design Tools #### Kaleidoscope Based on Doramay Keasbey's rotation technique: the grid becomes an even square, the top-left quadrant (lightly shaded) is your **seed**, and the other three quadrants rotate into place automatically as you paint. You can paint in *any* quadrant — your click flows back to the seed. **Corner (a/b/c/d)** cycles which corner of your seed sits at the design's center. The same seed produces four genuinely different designs: one setting pulls your motif's weight into a solid central medallion, the opposite throws it to the outer corners, and the two in between give pinwheel movement. For the most distinct variants, make your seed asymmetric — symmetric seeds collapse some corners into the same design. #### Mirrors Four mirror toggles for free-draw mode, each showing a **dashed red guide line** on its axis while active: * **Mirror ↔** — reflects left/right across the vertical center line * **Mirror ↕** — reflects top/bottom across the horizontal center line * **Mirror ⤢** — reflects across the twill diagonal (bottom-left to top-right). Requires a square grid; turning it on makes the grid square. * **Mirror ⤡** — reflects across the other diagonal (top-left to bottom-right). Also requires a square grid. Mirrors combine: turn them all on and every stroke builds a fully 8-fold-symmetric design — one click paints up to eight cells. Reflections land directly across the dashed lines — painting near an axis puts the mirrored copy close by; painting far from it throws the copy across the grid. #### Rotate ⟳ Rotates the whole design 90° clockwise. On a non-square grid the dimensions swap — handy for turning a weft-run motif into a warp-run one. #### Surprise Me Fills the grid with a random starting design honoring whatever symmetry mode is active. A great class exercise: Surprise Me, then cycle the Kaleidoscope corner to audition four designs, then refine by hand. #### Undo / Redo The ↩ and ↪ buttons (or **Ctrl/Cmd+Z** and **Shift+Ctrl/Cmd+Z**) step through your design history. A whole paint drag counts as one step, as does each Clear, Rotate, Surprise Me, or resize. *** ### The Loom Meter The right-hand panel answers "can my loom weave this?" while you design: * **Blocks used** — how many distinct blocks your design currently needs (distinct column patterns). * **Profile treadles** — how many distinct treadling rows it needs. * **Shafts needed (≈) by structure** — for every Block Substitution template installed, the approximate shafts your current block count requires, green when it fits the loom size you picked and red when it doesn't. The figures are planning estimates from each template's tie-down and per-block shaft counts; the exact requirement is confirmed when you apply the template. Watching this while designing teaches the fundamental trade-off of block weaves: every additional block costs shafts, and symmetric designs need fewer blocks. *** ### Units per Block How many weave-structure units each painted square becomes in the generated draft. Each unit is itself several threads (a Summer & Winter unit is 4 ends), so higher numbers make larger, chunkier blocks in the cloth — 3 units per block in Summer & Winter makes each painted square 12 ends wide. Use it to match your sketch to a target cloth width and sett. *** ### Generating a Draft #### Open as Profile Draft Derives the profile structure from your painted design — unique columns become blocks/shafts, unique rows become treadling, and the tie-up falls out automatically — and opens it as a draft tab with the Alpha (letter) view styles pre-selected, so it reads as a classic lettered profile draft. The tab is an unsaved preview; keep it with Save if you like it. #### Generate ▸ Block Substitution Does the same, then opens the Block Substitution panel focused on your new profile draft, ready to apply a weave structure. Pick Summer & Winter, doubleweave, a Bronson lace — any installed template — and Block Substitution expands each block into real threading, treadling, and tie-up. Because the profile draft is an ordinary draft, everything else works on it too: edit it by hand, print it, or run it through Block Substitution several times to compare structures side by side. *** ### Tips * **Start with Surprise Me + Kaleidoscope** when teaching — everyone gets a distinctive, symmetric design in seconds, and cycling the corner button makes the design space tangible. * **Watch the block count as you mirror.** Adding symmetry often *reduces* the number of blocks — you can see a design drop from over-budget to weavable just by mirroring it. * **Design big, generate small.** Sketch on a roomy grid, then use Units per Block of 1 for fine cloth or higher for bold blocks, rather than repainting at a different scale. * **Compare structures.** Generate the same profile through two or three different templates and open View Fabric on each — the "one design, many cloths" principle of block weaving in action.