Picture above: the Builder window.

The Builder uses a tremendous amount of memory. Each layer needs to be fully rendered in the window, and since the application needs to work with uncompressed bitmap data, the amount of data can easily exceed hundreds of MB of RAM. There is a limit of what the application can handle, and for that reason the Builder can only be opened when the combination of number of layers and mosaic size is below a safety threshold (the size is indicated in the status bar, left). In most cases this will be more than enough. This does not depend on the size of your system, but the Windows API for handling bitmaps in memory. The Builder has some useful tools. These are:

• The layers: one for each colour that was selected by the application. For application generated colours (so: not for pictures) each colour is indicated with the actual colour itself, and a checkbox. For pictures the actual picture is used in this Builder overview, also with a checkbox. When a checkbox is checked the corresponding colour or picture is shown. At start all the checkboxes are ticked, showing the full mosaic. The 'master' checkbox on top is useful to show all layers again.
• Show follow-me text: when checked useful information is provided at the mouse pointer. This information is also shown in the top right corner. The metric (cm or inch) is determined by the indicator in the status bar.

  Important note: In case you have created a sideways mosaic (see here for details), the Builder will only show 1-stud bricks only. That is caused by the internal building and brick data management. So, when you open the Builder of a sideway mosaic you will notice that e.g. a 2x2 brick is now shown as 2x1 brick. No worries, the data is OK and the blueprint excel file is correct. But technically you have a 1-stud high brick when showing the mosaic sideways.

Picture above: the Builder in which several layers have been made invisible (unchecked).

The Builder Editor
The Builder has a simple brick editor feature. The editor is shows by pressing the little button 'Edit', bottom-right. The following window will now be shown:

On the left the colour palette is shown in a YUV-colour space. On the right a button is seen, and two areas with information. The top two pictures are the originally clicked (left) and the new selected brick (right). In the example above the green brick was selected by clicking with the mouse on a brick in the builder. The right picture is selected by clicking with the mouse on a colour 'dot' in the YUV diagram.
The top area shows the information of the original brick, the bottom lines show the availability and colour name of the replacement brick.

Left picture: the YUV colour view; right picture: the colour patches. The little arrows toggle between these two views.

For real pictures also real bricks will be shown. For a computer generated bricks a 2x2 brick is shown. This is a general shape, and does not reflect the size of the selected brick! By pressing the 'Apply' button the brick in the builder is now replaced by the new selection. Some characteristics:

• This kind of brick replacement will only work brick-by-brick. In case you like to select and replace all brick colours at once, you need to use uncheck the to-be-discarded-colour in the main window, and then run the mosaic again.
• The edited values are immediately replaced and can not be undone. This is onyl possible by re-edit and select the original colour again. To save the result you need to save the full data sets again (via menu bar 'Files' 'Save mosaic as..' ).
• The replaced brick is stored in the same layer as the original brick. This helps to identify which bricks were replaced. When a project is saved after editing, all the project data is sorted by colour (and position). So, after re-loading a project with edited bricks, the new layered Builder is now correctly rebuilt according to the new colour, and therefore all edited positions have been forgotten.
• When you select a brick in the Builder, a small rectangle will be shown to indicate which brick is selected. Clicking anywhere outside the picture (white) area will deselect the rectangle.

Picture above: a green brick is replaced by a pink brick after pressing the 'Apply' button.

Saving the full builder data
When pressing the 'Save layers as PSD' button the full builder data is saved as a Photoshop file (file extension .psd). After successful saving the application shows where the builder file was saved.