Workspace Overview

The ShuffleKit workspace is where the pieces of your game come together. Use Data to describe the items in the active collection and Design to build the layout that renders them. Cards, boards, mats, tokens, dice, screens and boxes all use the same two-part rhythm.

Start with a collection

Every project begins with a collection. A card collection gives you the familiar card grid and an All cards library; other collection types give you the data or gallery view that makes sense for the piece.

Click the + at the end of the rail (its tooltip reads New collection) to add another component. The dialog asks What are you making?: choose the type and physical size before you create it. That choice sets the initial canvas and the Print & Ship product match. See Components & Collections for the full walkthrough.

The quickest first pass

You do not need to learn every control before making something real. For a first card collection:

1. In Data, add a Text property such as Name, an Image property for Artwork, and a Select property such as Type.
2. Add a few cards and give each one real values.
3. In Design, choose a starter layout or begin with a blank one.
4. Bind the name, artwork and any rules text to those properties.
5. Turn on Preview mode in Design and check the longest or busiest card.

For a board, mat, token or die, the sequence is the same: create the collection, give its items the properties they need, then design its valid face or faces.

The five regions

1. Data and Design

The two tabs at the top are the main mode switch:

• Data is the spreadsheet or gallery for the active collection.
• Design is the visual editor for that collection's layouts.

They show the same underlying items. Commit an edit in Data and its render updates in the preview and in Design's Preview mode.

Once you have opened a tab, ShuffleKit keeps it loaded, so switching back and forth between Data and Design doesn't rebuild the page each time.

2. The workspace controls

The top bar keeps common controls close:

• File holds the import actions (a CSV or Excel file, a Google Sheet, or a new project from a PDF or Illustrator file), the export actions, and Clear for emptying a collection or the project.
• View switches the collection between Sheet and Gallery and holds Sort, Filter, Columns, the Totals row and Row height. See Search, Sort, Filter & View.
• Panel shows or hides the side panel with Show panel, and lets you turn off the sections you don't use (Card Details, Shufflo AI, Notes).
• Search sits right after Panel. It starts as a small button; click it or press ⌘K and it opens into a field that finds items in the current collection.

The right end of the bar is for sending the game out. When someone else has the project open, their avatars show there; hover one to see who it is and what they are looking at. Next come Share (the project owner's invite button, see Collaborate on a Project) and the filled Print & export button. In the sheet, the cell another person has selected gets a coloured outline with their name on it. A project shared with you shows a View only chip beside the Data and Design tabs.

Print & export opens a panel with every way your game leaves ShuffleKit, in three groups:

• Print: PDF print sheet to print and cut at home, and Order printed copies through Print & Ship.
• Files: Cards as images (PNG, JPEG or SVG, one per card in a ZIP), plus Tabletop Simulator and Roll20 deck sheets.
• Online: Publish online for a link anyone can open and play, and Play online to deal a table and invite players. This group only shows on projects you own.

A small crown marks an option your plan doesn't include yet. You can still open it to see what it does. The file options open the same export dialog as the File menu, described in Import & Export. The button appears once the collection has at least one property.

The exact actions are type-aware. Only a card collection offers the Tabletop Simulator... export; a board or die collection's menus act on the component that is currently active.

3. The data view

In a card or token collection, each row is one item and each custom column is a property. The + at the end of the header adds a property. While the collection has one front design, the popover also shows Show it on the card, on by default: the new column goes onto that design as a layer of its own, styled like a similar layer already there, and the toast offers Open design to see where it landed (or Undo). Required properties have an asterisk. The link icon beside a column name shows whether that column appears on the card in the preview; hover it for the status, and click it to connect the column to an element on that layout.

Gallery-first components, such as boards and dice, show rendered thumbnails by default because a handful of physical pieces is easier to review visually than as a wide spreadsheet. You can still use their properties and layouts in exactly the same way. Any collection can switch between the two under View → Show as, and ShuffleKit remembers the choice for that collection.

4. The live preview

The panel at the right has three tabs: Card Details (the live preview), Shufflo AI and Notes. Card Details renders the selected item with the layout it resolves to. Use the filmstrip to move through a collection, and use Why this layout? when an item appears with an unexpected design. See Component Preview & Details.

When a component has more than one printable face, the flip button at the top of the panel turns it over. Cards, boards and mats use Front and Back; screens use Outside and Inside; dice use numbered faces; booklets use numbered pages.

5. The collection rail

The rail at the bottom switches the active collection. All cards is the shared card library; card collections are subsets with per-collection quantities. Other collections are separate component sets such as Main Board or Damage Counters, and a thin divider marks where one component type's tabs end and the next begin.

Click the + at the end of the rail to open the component catalog. The rail only changes what you are working on. It does not move or merge the data belonging to another component type.

The mental model

An item is the intersection: its property values flow into the layout selected for its component type and face. Once that clicks, cards and the rest of your game pieces follow the same predictable workflow.

On a phone

The same workspace works on a phone, arranged for a thumb:

• Cards open in Gallery. Tap a card to open the side panel on it, as a sheet from the bottom of the screen.
• Above the gallery, a line counts the cards (24 cards) beside a Select button. In select mode each tap ticks a card, and a bar at the bottom reads Tap cards to select or 3 selected, with All (or None), Copy to duplicate them, Delete, and × to stop selecting. Done, where Select was, stops it too.
• Search sits at the top of the Data tab, with a Sheet / Gallery switch and a ⋮ button beside it. The ⋮ sheet starts with Undo and Redo, then holds File, View and the actions for any selection.
• The collection rail tucks away while you scroll down and comes back when you scroll up.
• In Sheet view, tap a cell to select it and tap it again to edit. With a cell selected, the bar at the bottom shows the cell's value, an undo button, and an Edit button that opens the whole card as a form. While you type in a cell, the bar sits on top of the keyboard with the column's name, × to cancel the edit, up and down arrows to the previous and next field, and Done. The square eye button at the bottom right shows or hides the preview panel.
• The ⋮ sheet ends with a Danger zone holding the Clear action.
• The Design tab opens on a list of your designs. Tap one to open it in the phone editor, where you move, resize and rotate elements with a finger. It shows a real card's data, with a Card / Fields switch under the card and ‹ / › to step through the cards that use the design. Switch collections from the Data tab.

The first time you open your cards on a phone, a Start here checklist sits above the gallery with three steps: Fill in a card, Change how every card looks and Get more cards from Shufflo. Each step ticks itself off once you've done it, however you did it. Tap a step to start it, or tap × to hide the list for good.

Keyboard shortcut

⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) opens search and puts the cursor in it for the active collection, as long as you aren't already typing in a field.