FAQ & troubleshooting
Quick answers to the questions and snags that come up most often.
Open in the interactive manual →The interactive version has full-text search, a table of contents, and light/dark themes.
"Can I build a 3D website with Claude or ChatGPT?"
Yes. 3dCMS is also an MCP server: add https://3dcms.info/mcp as a connector in Claude, ChatGPT (developer mode), Cursor, VS Code or another MCP client, sign in with Google, and ask for the site you want. The assistant builds it in your account and publishes it when you say yes. No code and nothing to install. See Build a 3D website with Claude or ChatGPT.
"My scene disappeared!"
You've orbited or zoomed away from everything. Press F to frame your selection, or Shift+F for the whole scene. On a tablet, the F button on the Tools rail does it without a keyboard. Happens to everyone.
"I can't orbit the camera."
On desktop you must hold Alt while dragging: a plain drag is reserved for selecting. The mouse wheel zooms anytime. If you'd rather not hold a key, click Tumble in the Tools rail and a plain drag orbits instead. See Moving around the viewport.
"A countdown banner appeared about maintenance."
That's 3dCMS itself, not your scene. When a maintenance window is scheduled, a small banner with a live countdown appears in the editor and on published scenes: "Starts in…" beforehand, "Maintenance in progress" during. Dismiss it and it stays dismissed until the next window. Save your work before the window opens; the site may be briefly unavailable.
"Web import shows an error."
Import runs through a proxy. On the hosted app, make sure you're signed in: the crawl needs an authenticated session. See Import a real website.
"The Assistant panel is greyed out."
It needs an Anthropic API key. Paste one into Settings ▸ AI Assistant and the panel activates instantly. See Meet the Assistant.
"My textures won't show / a model imported untextured."
If a model uses KTX2/Basis-compressed textures, they're not supported yet. Re-export the GLB with PNG/JPEG textures. Also note that decimated models render with a solid color by design.
"The viewport froze / went black while I was working."
Your device paused the 3D view to reclaim memory, common on a laptop juggling several GPU-hungry tabs. The editor now says so instead of looking hung, and the first thing it tells you is the important part: your scene is safe and autosaved in this browser. Click Reload the editor and you come back to it. The notice lays over the viewport rather than replacing the editor, so your panels and your place stay put. If the message instead says this browser can't run the editor at all, WebGL is switched off or blocked there, usually a managed-device policy or a hardened privacy browser.
"It says my scene is too big to autosave."
The browser's local storage is limited (~5 MB), and a heavy imported or generated model can exceed it. Use File ▸ Save As to store the scene on your account, where the ceiling is 50 MB a scene rather than 5. See Saving your work.
"Where's my published link?"
Publishing copies it to your clipboard, and your Account page lists every published site with a copy button. The form is 3dcms.info/<handle>/sites/<slug>/.
"I edited my scene but the live site didn't change."
Editing never changes the public site until you publish again: drafts and published sites are independent on purpose.