deep dive

Inside the Component Designer

A look at how Sysonaut lets you build your own components — layers, icons, a 2D representation, and reusable shapes you can save as SVG.

Sysonaut

The palette ships with plenty of components, but the real power is building your own. The Component Designer is where that happens.

A component is a Shape plus meaning

Under the hood, a Component references a Shape — its visual blueprint — while carrying the domain meaning ("Firewall", "Router") that validation and the catalog will build on later. The Component Designer is where you author that visual layer.

What you can control

  • Layers — stack geometric building blocks; each can float at its own elevation.
  • Icons — place catalog icons (or short surface text) on the top, front or side faces, with background, colour and an adaptive "contrast" option.
  • 2D representation — a single glyph that defines how the Shape reads in 2D, independent of the isometric layers.
  • Hit Area — the floor footprint that anchors the label and connection ports.

Reuse everywhere

Save a component once and it joins your user-wide library — available in every project's palette, and exportable as SVG.

We will go deeper on layers and the icon pipeline in future posts.