Guide / Draw and edit

The toolbar and the More menu

The toolbar holds the actions you use most, the More menu holds all of them in sections, and you choose which ones sit on the bar.

Free

How it works

One row across the top of the canvas, in the same order in all three editors. Undo and Redo are always on it, the editor's own view switcher and actions follow, and the sidebar toggle is the last thing on the right. Deploy is the one primary action, in the middle of the right-hand end. Everything else is in the More menu, the button with three dots.

Some actions are pinned to the bar to start with. You can change that.

The left end of the toolbar of a diagram: undo and redo, then the words Auto layout, Check, Simulate, Monitor and Scenarios, then the More button — The left end of the bar of a diagram editor, with nothing pressed.

The command palette

More opens a searchable list of every action, in sections, with the five you used last first under Recent. It is also the command palette, and the first-run tour names it. Type to filter: the letters you matched are marked in each row, and an action answers to keywords as well as to its name, so png finds Export, c8 finds what is Camunda 8 and bpmnlint finds Check. Each row has a pin, and the list says how many actions match. With the keyboard, the arrow keys move, Enter runs the action, Shift+Enter pins or unpins it and Esc closes the list.

The command palette with tr typed in the field. The first row is Trace paths, in the View section, with its shortcut, and the second is Scenarios. The letters that matched are marked — Typing filters the list and marks the letters that matched.

The command palette in your tool

JetBrains

The palette's shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+,, or ⌘⌥, on a Mac. The same actions are in the IDE's own Find Action and Keymap under Tools | Penstock, so a shortcut can be bound to any of them the way the IDE binds its own. The palette is the action Find action in the keymap. The actions work while a Penstock editor has the focus, and there they take the keys before the IDE's own actions. Export keeps Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+C. See Shortcuts.

VS Code

The palette's shortcut is Ctrl+Alt+,, or Cmd+Alt+, on a Mac, and the command is Penstock: Find action. The same actions are in VS Code's own Command Palette under Penstock, with the names they have in the editor, so a key can be bound to any of them in Keyboard Shortcuts. An action the diagram does not offer is not listed, and one it has switched off is greyed out. See Shortcuts.

Command line

Not available on the command line. The command line has no editor and so no palette. The help of each command lists what it does, and the actions that need a licence say so when you run them.

Pin or unpin an action

Open More (three dots).
Find the action. Next to its name there is a small pin. It is a quiet grey on an action that is pinned already, and it shows on the other rows when the pointer or the keyboard is on them.
Click the pin, or press Shift+Enter on the row. The action moves onto the bar. Do it again and it goes back into the menu only.

Penstock remembers your choice in ~/.penstock/preferences.json, the same file that keeps the width of the sidebar and whether you have seen the tour. It is the same in every tool on your machine and survives a restart. It is never stored in penstock.yaml, so your toolbar never lands in a teammate's checkout. If a later version adds a new action, you still get it, even if you rearranged the bar.

On the bar, an action only a well known icon can name is an icon with a tooltip: undo, redo and the sidebar toggle. Everything else is a word. A toggle stays pressed while what it shows is open, and its label never changes with the state.

Every action in the diagram editor

The menu groups its rows under headings, and the command palette uses the same sections in the same order: Check & run, Layout & convert, Deploy & share, View, File, Edit and Help.

Action	What it does	Pinned at first	Shown for
Undo, Redo	Take back or repeat the last change.	Always on the bar	All
Auto layout Pro	Lays the whole diagram out again, then offers Undo. Auto layout	Yes	All
Check	Opens the check card, with Show all for the Problems tab. Diagram check	Yes	All
Simulate	Moves a token through the process. Token simulation	Yes	All
Monitor	What the engine is doing with this diagram: incidents, and the instances waiting at each step. Monitor	Yes	All
Scenarios Pro	The ways through this process, and running them. Scenarios	Yes	Camunda 7, Camunda 8, Operaton, CIB seven
Coverage Pro	Colours what your process tests reached. Process tests and coverage	Yes	Once test reports exist
Migrate to Camunda 8	What does not carry over, and converting it. Camunda 7 to 8	Yes	Camunda 7, Operaton, CIB seven
Deploy	Opens the Deploy popover, which sends the diagram. Deployment	Yes, on the right	Camunda 7, Camunda 8, Operaton, CIB seven
Sidebar	Shows or hides the sidebar. An icon at the right edge, pressed while it is open. The sidebar	Always on the bar	All
Fit diagram, Zoom in, Zoom out	The view. Each has a shortcut in the tools that have one.	No	All
Transaction boundaries	Draws a bar where the engine commits a transaction: before a user task, a receive task, an event-based gateway, an external task and a message, timer, signal or conditional catch event, and before or after an activity with an asynchronous continuation. The bars follow the diagram as you edit.	No	Camunda 7, Operaton, CIB seven
Minimap	Shows a small overview of a large diagram.	No	All
Trace paths	Shows every path that runs through the selected step and dims the rest. Off until a task, a gateway or an event is selected. Trace paths	No	All
Show comment badges	Draws the number of open comments on each element that has some. Comments	No	All
Editor theme	Opens a small list: the first row follows your tool's theme, which is the default, and Light, Dark and Dracula are the editor's own.	No	All
Sketchy drawing	Draws the diagram as if by hand, on your screen only.	No	All
Export…	Opens the export dialog, where you can also copy the diagram as a picture. Export	No	All
Templates…	Opens the connector template browser. Element templates	No	Camunda 8
Import diagram…	Turns a draw.io, Visio, Signavio or Bizagi file into BPMN. Import a diagram	No	All
Share as HTML…	Writes one offline HTML file. Share as HTML	No	All
Copy, Paste	Use the system clipboard. You can paste into another diagram.	No	All
Keyboard shortcuts	Opens the sheet of every shortcut of the editor. See below.	No	All
Show the tour again	Replays the six-step tour of the editor.	No	All

Check, Simulate, Monitor, Scenarios, Coverage, Migrate to Camunda 8, Transaction boundaries, Minimap, Trace paths, Sketchy drawing and Show comment badges stay pressed while they are on. Undo, Redo, Copy, Paste and Auto layout refuse to run while a token simulation is on, so a read-only preview cannot be written to the file. See Token simulation.

A diagram open in the editor with the toolbar on top, the palette at the left of the canvas, a user task selected and the Properties tab of the sidebar on the right — The bar: undo and redo on the left, the actions you use most, the More menu, Deploy as the primary action and the sidebar toggle at the right edge.

The decision and form editors

They have the same kind of bar: Undo and Redo, the actions of that editor, Deploy and the sidebar toggle, with the same More menu and command palette. Their actions are fewer.

Editor	On the bar	In the More menu
Decision	A button for each view of the file (the requirements diagram, then one per decision), Check, Deploy, Sidebar	Trace paths, Export decision table as a workbook, Export decision table as CSV, Import decision table, Add rules from spreadsheet, Share as HTML, Keyboard shortcuts
Form	Preview, Check, Deploy, Sidebar	Share as HTML, Keyboard shortcuts

The left end of the toolbar of a form: undo and redo, then the words Preview and Check and the More button — The bar of a form editor.

Deploy is shown when the engine is known. Check on a form is free. The form's Check is off while the file cannot be read, and its tooltip says so. See The DMN editor, The form editor and The sidebar.

Keyboard shortcuts

The Keyboard shortcuts action, in the BPMN, DMN and form editors, opens a sheet with every shortcut of the editor you are in, in groups: Canvas, Edit, Modeling and Penstock. It has a search field, Search actions and keys. The sheet is built from what the editor really binds, so it cannot drift from the editor. Press Shift+/ to open it. On a US keyboard that is the ? key. The shortcut is matched by the physical key, the one that holds / on a US keyboard. Or choose it from the More list. Where an action has a shortcut, its tooltip on the bar says so.

What you see

Words for the actions you use, and icons only where an icon is well known: undo, redo and the sidebar toggle.
One main button: Deploy.
A pinned action that needs a feature you do not have shows what it would do and offers to buy Pro or sign in when you press it.

Common problems

Deploy is not on the toolbar.: It is shown when the engine is Camunda 7, Camunda 8, Operaton or CIB seven. A Classic BPMN project has none. Set engine in penstock.yaml. See Engines.
Coverage is not there.: It appears only after your process tests have run and left reports under target or build. See Process tests and coverage.
Migrate to Camunda 8 is not there.: It is for Camunda 7, Operaton and CIB seven diagrams only.
I pinned something and it is gone in another tool.: Your choice is kept in ~/.penstock/preferences.json. If PENSTOCK_HOME is set, the file is under that folder instead. Check both tools see the same one.
The menu has no Copy as image.: It is not a menu entry any more. It is Copy in the export dialog, beside Save. See Export.

The toolbar and the More menu

See also