Working on a design together

On Studio and Enterprise plans several people can have the same saved design open at once: you see each other's cursors, saved changes appear without anyone refreshing, and one person at a time holds the editing pen.

Who is in the room

Anyone in the workspace a design belongs to joins as soon as they open it from the dashboard; there is nothing to switch on. Each person appears as a coloured circle in the top bar, beside your own account button, in a colour that stays the same for them in every design and on every reconnect; beyond six, the rest show as a count. Hover one for a name, what that person is doing, and whether they have view-only access.

Cursors and activity

Everyone's pointer is drawn on your plan as an arrow in their colour, with a name pill beneath it and, under the name, what they are working on: editing roads, placing homes, reviewing in 3D, running the appraisal. A line being drawn — a road, footpath, driveway, fence, green area or water body — appears dashed in their colour as the points go down, so you watch the work, not a pointer twitching. After a minute without moving, a cursor fades and its pill reads idle. Anyone looking elsewhere on the site becomes a small faint disc with their initial, held against the nearest edge of your view.

Following someone's view

Click a person's circle to ride their camera: your view swings to the ground they are looking at and keeps tracking as they move, and a Following banner appears with a Stop button. Click the circle again, press Stop, or simply take the view back by dragging the plan or scrolling to zoom. An eye and a count beside the circles say when people are following you.

One person edits at a time

A part-finished layout cannot be merged with another, so Airship passes round a single editing pen. The first person in picks it up without noticing. Everyone else sees a bar at the top of the drawing reading [name] is editing, with the note you see their changes live. While it is up, the whole sidebar is disabled — the fields, Generate, and the appraisal and export buttons with them — along with the tool palette and the content library; dragging pans instead of moving anything, and editing keystrokes do nothing. You can still zoom, pan, switch to sketch or 3D, comment and mark up.

Asking for the pen, and handing it over

Ask for the pen nudges whoever holds it; asking starts no countdown, and nothing is taken from them for not answering. They see [name] would like to edit with Hand over and Not yet, which clears after about half a minute. Hand over saves their work first and only then moves the pen; if that save fails or clashes, the pen stays where it is and they are told why.

Edit anyway sits beside it and is never gated: it opts you out of the pen so you can both work. If you both save, whoever saves second is asked to reload the other version or keep theirs as a separate design.

Seeing edits as they happen

Each time the holder saves, everyone else picks that version up and it is applied in place: your camera and your tool stay where they were, your selection too unless the thing you had selected was itself changed, and an update never lands mid-drag or while you are typing.

If you have unsaved changes of your own, automatic updating stops: your work is never overwritten. The bar then tells you how many changes behind you are and offers Catch up, which loads the latest version, asking first because your unsaved changes will go.

What view-only looks like

Members with view access join like everybody else; hover their circle and it says view only. They see the design update live and can follow views, comment and mark up, but every field is greyed out and the Save button is replaced by View only.

When a connection drops

If your connection goes, the circles, cursors and editing bar disappear and you are free to edit - nothing stays locked because somebody's laptop went to sleep. Airship reconnects on its own and the room rebuilds in a second or two. If the pen holder closes their tab or loses signal, it comes free within about a minute; if they are still there but have changed nothing for a few minutes, anyone else may take it.