iCity 2 manual45 of 45 pages written
Screenshots from
Blenderonly host today
Manual / Reference / GlossaryiCity 2 · Windows
Glossary
Every term iCity 2 puts in front of you, grouped by where you meet it. Where the interface and the code disagree on a word — and they do, in about a dozen places — the entry gives you both names and tells you which one is on screen.
How to read this page
Terms are grouped by where you meet them: the shape of the product, then Draft, then Design, then the cloud, then your files, then your account. Every entry is named the way the interface names it.
Note
Several things in iCity 2 answer to two names. The engine, the addon, the website and the log lines were written at different times, and a word that changed on screen did not always change underneath. A Region is still a Block in the mode list. A Road in the status bar is a Segment in the popup that edits it. The website says Team where the addon says Organization.
Where that happens, the entry gives you both, and the name on screen is the one to use when you are talking to somebody. The other name is worth knowing because it is what you will see in a tooltip, a log line or a status message.
glossary-road-and-segment.png
The 3D viewport in Draft with exactly one road selected and its right-click popup open, framed so both names read at once: the iCity status bar along the bottom saying 'Road', and the popup titled SEGMENT with its 'Delete Segment' verb visible.
/docs-shots/blender/
The shape of the product
TermWhat it means
iCity 2The product: a Blender addon plus a second program that ships inside it. The website writes it iCity in navigation and buttons; the addon calls itself iCity 2; file names and identifiers use
icity2. All three are the same thing.iCity EditorThe main interface, drawn by iCity itself inside a node-editor area of the iCity 2 workspace. It holds the launch screen, the Start screen and the Draft/Design workspace.
iCity Editor · iCity Logs · Data OutputThe three editor types iCity registers, chosen from an area’s editor-type selector. A footer tip still tells you to pick “iCity Themes”; no editor of that name exists — the one it means is iCity Editor.
EngineThe separate program that owns your city — the graph, the regions, the lots, the buildings and every parameter behind them. It ships as
bin/windows/iCity2App.exe and must be running for any Draft edit. Log lines call it the iCity2 Core. After a crash it restarts itself three times, then gives up with Restart budget exhausted (3 attempts) — engine stopped. See The engine.DraftThe module where you draw and edit the city’s structure: the graph, roads, regions, lots and massing. Left half of the header toggle. It is the only module with drawing tools.
DesignThe module that dresses the city: theme, materials, props, surface details, lanes and markings. Right half of the header toggle, and locked until you are signed in and the scene holds a graph — the disabled tooltip reads Design dresses your city — draw a graph in Draft first.
Start with default · Start with default sceneStart the engine and let it build a default city, with no graph mesh of your own assigned. Offered on the Start screen and in Graph mode. Choosing it turns the Build Default Graph on Start preference on.
City (as a unit)Pricing shorthand, as in “1.2 cities / mo”. There is no city job in the product; the closest thing the cloud actually runs is a theme job.
Road graph · blocks · plots · building massesThe website’s words for the structure the engine builds. In the addon the same four things are the graph, regions, lots and massing.
Update available · SkipA newer stable release exists. The card opens once per session when you first enter the workspace. Skip means “not now”: the button stays pressed in the header for the rest of the session and is forgotten on restart.
Editable to the last dayThe website’s phrase for the fact that generation does not bake anything: the parameters behind the city stay live after it has been built.
Beyond boundaries, beyond limitsParametra’s tagline. It appears in the site footer, not in the addon.
glossary-editor-types.png
Blender's editor-type dropdown open on an area inside the iCity 2 workspace, scrolled so the three iCity entries — iCity Editor, iCity Logs and Data Output — are visible together, and no entry named 'iCity Themes' appears in the list.
/docs-shots/blender/
Drawing: the Draft words
TermWhat it means
GraphThe road-network mesh the whole city is generated from. Also the first editing mode (Alt+1), which is where you assign a mesh as the graph and start the engine.
SelectThe default tool on the rail; clicks pick elements through the gizmos. Clicking the lit Select button again switches selection off — clicks then do nothing, and only the unlit button says so.
Road · SegmentOne road between two nodes. The status bar calls it a Road; the right-click popup that edits it is titled SEGMENT and its delete verb reads Delete Segment. Same object.
Node · Junction · Dead EndA point of the road graph. The status bar names it by how many roads meet there: three or more is a Junction, exactly one is a Dead End, exactly two is a plain Node — a curve point, which can be dissolved.
Intersection typeWhat a junction is built as: Bare, Traffic or Roundabout. Set per junction from the card or the right-click popup.
RoundaboutA junction whose intersection type is Roundabout. Its outer and inner radius are dragged from two rings on the node.
Roads modeAlt+2, described as “Road network editing”. It defines four sub-modes — Road, Sidewalk, Nodes and Islands — but the row that switches between them is not drawn in this build, so Roads always shows the Road panels and both nodes and segments stay pickable. Islands is Design-only in any case.
RegionA parcel enclosed by roads, which the engine fills with lots and buildings, a park, or nothing. The status bar caption is Regions (Alt 3), but the mode is still listed as Blocks in the mode enum and the empty state still reads No blocks yet. In this build the mode only lets you select custom regions, below.
Custom RegionA free polygon you draw inside a region with Draw Region; it is split into buildings on its own. It must overlap a Buildings-typed region and cover at least one square metre. In Blocks mode this is the only thing you can select.
Region Type · Block ContentWhat a region holds. The card buttons read Buildings, None and Parks; the property behind them labels the first one Massing. Parks reveals a Park Type dropdown.
Park Type (Draft)Which park design to place when a region’s type is Parks: Mixed (a random design per block) or Park 1 to Park 4. Not the same control as Design’s Park settings, below.
SplitThe algorithm that cuts a region into lots: Grid, Recursive, Offset or Skeleton. The parameters column calls the same choice Massing Mode, with the items spelled Grid Buildings, Split: Recursive, Split: Offset and Split: Skeleton.
LotsAlt+4. The mode described as “Lots are parcels inside blocks”.
LotOne parcel inside a region, carrying one building or a green surface. Its Type is Building or Green, and it takes the presets Garage, Entrance and Backyard.
FootprintA building outline you draw by hand and extrude to a given height, rather than one the engine derived from a lot.
Draw TypeThe Residential / Mixed Use / Terraced picker for the next footprint. It opens when you hold the Draw Footprint button on the rail for about 0.6 s; a short click only toggles the tool.
FloorsA building’s storey count, at 3.5 m per storey — Mixed Use takes a 6 m ground floor. Editable on procedural buildings only — the handle reports Floors: procedural buildings only on anything else. Lots and footprints you drew start at about three storeys.
MassingThe buildings layer — footprints, floors and massing type (Residential, Mixed Use, Terraced). Alt+5; the status bar caption is Massing (Alt 5).
UNSYNCEDA warning in the selection header: a dress has claimed this object and frozen it out of procedural editing. Floors, type and reshape stop working on it. See What survives a re-dress.
Reference imagesTwo different things with one name. In Draft, image empties you place in the scene to model against. In Design, the up-to-ten images you attach to a prompt to steer generation.
OSM · Download OSMImporting a real street network from OpenStreetMap by dragging a box on a map. Only Download OSM on that card does anything: Clean OSM, Convert to iCity Geometry and the two cleanup sliders print “not implemented yet”.
glossary-region-and-block.png
The iCity Editor in Regions mode (Alt+3) on a city with no custom regions drawn yet, framed so the status-bar caption 'Regions (Alt 3)' and the panel's 'No blocks yet' empty state are both readable in the one shot.
/docs-shots/blender/
Dressing: the Design words
TermWhat it means
ThemeThe set of materials, props and elements that dresses a city, plus the dressed result itself. Also the name of the first tab in the Design rail. See Themes.
Dress · dressed cityApplying a theme to the city: the cloud produces the outputs, and the addon imports and links them onto your geometry.
Start with default themeThe Design Theme screen’s button. It copies the theme bundled with the addon into the open project and dresses the city with it, no generation and no credits. The checkbox of the same name on the New Project form is recorded and nothing reads it — the button is the working path.
Append from a projectCopy another local project’s theme files into this project and dress with them. Only local projects that already have a generated theme are listed.
Dress City from OutputsImport the outputs already sitting in the project folder and link them onto the city. It runs on its own after a job or an append; it has no button on any panel and is reached by searching for its name with F3. It cannot re-download anything from the cloud.
Front End · iCity2 Front EndThe collection the dressed city lands in. It is appended data in your .blend, not a link, so Blender’s own File → Export on that collection is how work leaves iCity — the addon has no export command of its own.
Parameters · Materials · Props · ImperfectionsThe four dressing categories of the Design column for whatever kind of element is selected. On screen the sections read Materials, Props and Surface details, with the Parameters category drawing its own panels instead of one section.
OptionsThe per-mode dressing panels the Parameters category draws — Road Lanes, Markings, Park settings. The word also appears on a prop system card, where options opens that one system’s spacing, density, seed and rotation.
Surface detailsThe section holding scattering systems for wear and detail — cracks, litter and the like. The addon’s own name for the category is Imperfections, which is what you will see in the category list and in the library browser.
Park settings (Design)A panel with Pattern (Grid, Radial, Organic, Formal), tree density and a tree collection. The settings are stored in the design state, and no part of the addon is known to read them back. It is a different control from Draft’s Park Type.
Prop system · Scattering systemOne card and one collection that place a set of assets — either on a placement of an element (in Props) or over a shape you draw (in Surface details and Scatter mode).
PlacementWhere on an element a system puts its props: a sidewalk segment path, a road surface, a roof. The list a system can offer comes from what the theme has actually built in your scene.
Path · Distribute · Packed · On PointThe four kinds of system in the Place props… picker: along a path; across a surface; across a surface without overlap; and one prop per point you place. The kind is fixed when the system is created.
Linker cardA Props or Surface details card the theme created for you rather than one you added. Its per-object sliders are absent on purpose; the card’s options row is the control.
Assign selected · Remove selectedPut a system’s props onto the elements selected in the viewport, or take them off. Both need a viewport selection first.
GrabTakes a copy of a prop that follows the cursor in the 3D viewport; click to put it down. It appears only on single-object cards saved by older builds.
ScatterProp and detail scattering, with the tools Draw Path, Draw Surface, Pack Surface and Place Points. Alt+6 reaches the mode, but it lives in Design: in Draft it reports Scatter lives in Design — switch modules to place props.
LaneOne strip of a road cross-section. The types are Driving, Parking, Bike, Bus, Shoulder and Middle island. Lane edits need a single road segment selected; with nothing selected you are editing the city-wide default.
Width reference (Road / Lane)Road keeps the road’s width fixed and redistributes the lanes inside it. Lane makes the widths absolute, so the road resizes. Once the city has been dressed this is locked to Road.
Middle islandA raised centre lane. Its width is structural: it keeps the width you set and never absorbs a redistribute, the same as a Shoulder.
Marking lineA lane marking drawn with the pen; its points snap to the nearest lane border. The sidewalk equivalent is a sidewalk path — tactile, bike or walkway.
Traffic islandTwo ways to make one: Custom clicks points in the viewport and commits with Enter; Middle takes selected roads and an Assign press, and has its own width and extrusion.
City syncRe-dressing the city after a Draft change, using the theme it already has. It is the header sync button, it is on Auto by default, and on Auto it genuinely fires about two seconds after a change. It costs credits, and refuses when nothing changed. See Re-dressing after a change.
Edit material · Edit propComposer modes in which your prompt regenerates assets you pick out of the scene, instead of generating a theme. Only assets that came from the cloud can be regenerated.
The cloud
TermWhat it means
Generate with AIThe popup that sends a prompt to the cloud for a theme, a single material, a single prop or a screenshot. It generates assets for a city you have already built; it does not lay a city out from a description.
Guides · Theme GuidesThe reference images a theme job produces first — City Scene, Building, Road View and the rest — which you approve before any asset is generated. The popup is titled THEME GUIDES.
SeedOne attempt at a guide set, shown as “Seed N / M”; the arrows page between them and Approve uses the one on screen. The word is also used for a single generated asset’s version — a regenerated asset lands as a new seed beside the old one.
ReviewThe step label the job shows while it is stopped at a gate, waiting for your decision.
Use this themeAdopt a theme the cloud found in the library instead of generating one. Offered in the CHOOSE A THEME popup.
Generate newIgnore the library matches and generate a fresh theme, optionally with extra details typed in.
Regenerate (guides)Re-roll the guide set with an optional refinement note and images. The previous set stays browsable. Each re-roll is its own job and costs credits.
Regenerate (asset)Make a new variation of a cloud asset. It lands beside the original rather than replacing it.
Generate Model · Generate PBRFill in the piece an asset is missing — a mesh for an image-only prop, PBR maps for a map-less material — without changing the asset itself.
Assets: Mixed · Select only · Generate onlyWhere a job’s materials and props come from. Mixed reuses a library asset when a match exists and generates otherwise (the default). Select only never generates. Generate only never adopts.
Scene PropsThe screenshot lane’s output: prop images imagined for a framed view. It produces images only — nothing is placed in the 3D scene.
Cloud ActivityThe popup with a job’s step ladder and its cloud log. Cloud log lines appear here and in the composer thread, never in the iCity Logs editor.
CreditsWhat cloud work costs, shown as a ring in the composer and per step in the thread. A full theme runs roughly 220–275 credits and about 20 minutes; the Generate with AI popup’s own on-screen estimate of about 219 runs low. See Credits & plans.
ChatsThe history of prompts you have sent, so an earlier one can be copied or reused.
ClearThe refresh icon on the composer. It empties the prompt box, its attachments and any edit targets, and puts the composer back on a clean compose screen. Your history stays in Chats.
Custom pipeline settingsA developer panel switch that overrides the server’s production quotas for the next generation. It lives in the
iCity-2-dev sidebar tab and is not part of normal use.Remember
Job tracking lasts as long as the Blender session. A theme that finishes while Blender is closed cannot be picked back up from the interface — nothing re-downloads its assets on its own.
Your files
Your city lives in the engine, not in your .blend, and the project folder is where it is written down. That split is explained in full on How iCity fits with Blender.
TermWhat it means
ProjectThe container of your work: a folder under
Documents/iCity 2/<name> holding README.md, the saved city state, the theme files and project.json. Registered projects are mirrored on the server. See What a project is.city_state.v1.txtThe engine’s city, written into the project folder by the header S button and restored by Open Project. Blender’s own save does not touch it.
UntitledThe name shown when no project has been created, and the name of the Untitled (N) folder a theme job creates for itself if you start one with nothing open. Creating a project renames it.
Sync · Project syncA commit: the footer Sync button uploads the project folder with a message into the current version’s history. It is free and it is manual. The Auto setting on this sync never uploads anything — only the button does.
Project sync vs City syncTwo switches, one word, opposite behaviour. Project sync (footer) uploads the folder and only works when you press it. City sync (header) re-dresses the city and does fire on its own. See Saving, syncing, versioning.
VersionA numbered branch of a project, major.minor, created with a name and message; the project then continues on it. Versions live on the server only. An older version downloads read-only and refuses to sync.
IdentifyThe red footer button and its dialog, shown when the folder has no server id — created offline, refused for a name collision, or missing its
project.json. The dialog offers Upload as new or Use this project.Work sessionThe server-side record of a project being open — who, when, how many syncs, what it cost. Opened when a registered project is created or opened, closed when you close it, switch, or quit.
Library FolderWhere iCity stores the assets it generates and downloads. A preference; leave it empty for the managed default. Changing it does not move existing files — the Sync button beside it does that once.
Custom Assets FolderA folder of your own assets that iCity only ever reads from. It needs the layout
materials/<Category>/<AssetName>/ and props/<Category>/<AssetName>/, one folder per asset. See Using your own assets.Asset libraryOne word, three scopes: the website means the shared body of generated assets, the addon means the Library Folder preference, and the account means the assets you have saved or starred.
StarredA favourite in the library browser. Starring works only on assets that came from the cloud, so a custom-folder view filtered to Starred is always empty.
GroupA name of your own that you file library assets under, alongside the built-in categories.
Account, plans and sharing
TermWhat it means
Login with iCity · Sign InSigning in to your Parametra account. The header button opens your browser at
auth.parametra.net and hands the result back to Blender. Everything in Design needs it.AccountThe popup titled ACCOUNT, with your profile, organization, projects, preferences, community, contact, products, terms and about. Reached from the header.
Plan · UsageYour subscription and how much of this period’s credit allowance has been spent, shown as a percentage ring.
Plan tiersFree, Indie, Studio and Team, plus the Founding Studio launch offer. Annual variants are the same tier billed yearly.
SeatA per-person licence. Team is priced per seat, with a minimum of three, and its credits are pooled.
Organization · TeamThe group that shares a credit pool and a member roster. The addon and the API say Organization; the website’s account tab says Team. Same group.
Roleowner, admin, member or viewer. The Organization tab and the Organization project checkbox appear for admins and owners only.
Organization projectA project everyone in your organization can see, whose admins choose who may open it.
AccessPer-project membership: who else can open this project, on which version, and for how long. Managed from the account popup without opening the project.
Access keyA token the owner copies for somebody outside the organization. It is used once and then stops working. Only the owner can mint one.
CasesYour support conversations, started by a Report or a Contact us message and continued under Account → Contact us → My cases.
Builds · DownloadsThe published addon zips listed in the account’s Downloads tab. Each link is personal and expires, so there is no public download URL. See Requirements & installing.
On this page
How to read this pageThe shape of the productDrawing: the Draft wordsDressing: the Design wordsThe cloudYour filesAccount, plans and sharingNeed help?
The Discord is fastest for anything scene-specific. Email suits licensing, billing and anything needing a file attached.
Contact support →