How to SPLIT and COMBINE WINDOWS in Blender

Introduction

In this arti­cle we see how to open and close win­dows in Blender, this is some­thing that you have to prac­tice and mas­ter as soon as pos­si­ble since in gen­er­al we are going to work with mul­ti­ple windows.

I have a quick video on this topic:


We start with the Blender View­port win­dow shown in Fig­ure 1.

viewport window in blender
Fig. 1: Start­ing from a stan­dard Blender window

To cre­ate a new win­dow in Blender we take the cur­sor to one of the cor­ners of the win­dow, in this case the low­er left cor­ner, at a cer­tain point the cur­sor icon changes, as shown in fig­ures 2 and 3, this indi­cates that we can make a change in the lay­out of the windows.

bottom left corner of the viewport window in blender that allows to split the window in two
Fig. 2: The mouse is being moved to the low­er left cor­ner of the window.
bottom left corner of the viewport window in blender that allows to split the window in two
Fig. 3: When reach­ing the cor­ner the mouse point­er changes, indi­cat­ing that we can split the window.

If we click on that cor­ner and move the cur­sor upwards, we sep­a­rate a sec­ond win­dow hor­i­zon­tal­ly, as shown in Fig­ure 4, while if we move the cur­sor to the right, the win­dows are sep­a­rat­ed vertically.

horizontal window division in blender
Fig. 4: By click­ing and drag­ging upwards the win­dow is split horizontally.

vertical window division in blender
Fig. 5: By click­ing and drag­ging to the right the win­dow is split vertically.

Each of the win­dows can be fur­ther sub­di­vid­ed into oth­er win­dows, as shown in Fig­ure 6, in the new win­dow we cre­at­ed on the right, by mov­ing the cur­sor to the low­er left cor­ner, click­ing and drag­ging upwards, I divide that win­dow into two horizontally.

splitting multiple windows in blender
Fig. 6: With the new win­dow that appeared, the process can be repeated.

The content of windows in Blender

In Blender we always work with a set of win­dows, although we have not noticed it, when we install Blender and open it for the first time we will see the "3D View­port" win­dow, the "Time­line" win­dow, the "Out­lin­er" win­dow and the "Prop­er­ties" win­dow and maybe I am for­get­ting some oth­ers. In fig­ures 7 and 8 we can see the icons cor­re­spond­ing to the "Prop­er­ties" and "Out­lin­er" win­dows respectively.

blender properties window
Fig. 7: The prop­er­ties win­dow that comes by default in Blender.
blender outliner window
Fig. 8: The Out­lin­er win­dow that comes by default in Blender .

At any time we can change what each win­dow dis­plays by sim­ply click­ing on its icon and choos­ing the required win­dow from the list shown in Fig­ure 9.

button to change the content displayed by a window in blender
Fig. 9: In the upper left cor­ner of each win­dow is the icon that allows you to change the con­tents of the window.

In fig­ure 10 we have divid­ed the main win­dow into 4 and made each one show a dif­fer­ent window.

Multiple windows in Blender in which each one shows a different content.
Fig. 10: Mul­ti­ple win­dows in Blender in which each one shows a dif­fer­ent content.

How to combine windows in Blender

Now let's see how to undo mul­ti­ple win­dows in Blender, we start with the sit­u­a­tion seen in Fig­ure 11, where we have three win­dows that we would like to merge into one.

To join win­dows in Blender you have to take into account the fol­low­ing: two win­dows can be joined if in the bor­der that divides the two win­dows the height or the width of these win­dows match.

multiple windows in blender that will be combined into a single window.
Fig. 11: We start from this mul­ti­ple win­dow lay­out to com­bine them.

For exam­ple, in fig­ure 11, the upper left and right win­dows coin­cide in height where they meet, but not the bot­tom win­dow with any of the upper win­dows, so we start join­ing the upper windows.

To join the win­dows we go to one of the cor­ners where they join until the cur­sor icon changes as shown in fig­ure 12. If at that point we click and drag to the side of the oth­er win­dow, the icon shown in fig­ure 13 will appear,

bottom right corner of the viewport window in blender that allows to split the window in two
Fig. 12: Move the cur­sor to a point in the win­dow where the cor­ners of the win­dows meet.

This means that we can merge the win­dows into a sin­gle win­dow, and if at this point, while hold­ing down we move to the side of the oth­er win­dow the icon changes as shown in fig­ure 14, which allows us to decide what will be the con­tent of the win­dow that will result from the merge.

icon showing that two windows in blender can be combined.
Fig. 13: By click­ing and drag­ging one win­dow to the oth­er, this arrow appears, indi­cat­ing that the win­dows can be combined.
icon showing that two windows in blender can be combined.
Fig. 14: If we hold the click and move the mouse to the oth­er win­dow the arrow changes direction.

When the mouse is released, the two win­dows are com­bined into one and we obtain the result shown in Fig­ure 15.

multiple windows in blender that will be combined into a single window.
Fig. 15: The two win­dows were com­bined into one.

Notice that both win­dows now coin­cide in width where they meet, so we can com­bine them by tak­ing one of the win­dows at one of the con­tact cor­ners and mov­ing it into the region of the oth­er win­dow, as shown in Fig­ures 16 and 17.

bottom left corner of the viewport window in blender that allows to split the window in two
Fig. 16: The cur­sor is moved to one of the com­mon cor­ners of both windows.
two blender windows are combined into a single window
Fig. 17: The click-and-drag process is repeat­ed to com­bine Blender windows.

The result is shown in Fig­ure 18 where we have com­bined all the ini­tial win­dows into a sin­gle window.

viewport window in blender
Fig. 18: Result of com­bin­ing the mul­ti­ple ini­tial win­dows into one.

Extra detail

Ear­li­er it was men­tioned that win­dows could only be com­bined if they matched in width or height at the junc­tion area, how­ev­er small win­dows can be dragged to oth­er win­dows with which they do not share the same width or height, in Fig­ure 19 the upper left win­dow is tak­en and dragged to the low­er window.

bottom right corner of the viewport window in blender that allows to split the window in two
Fig. 19: Return­ing to the case of the three win­dows, the cur­sor is moved to one of the cor­ners of a small window.

As shown in Fig­ure 20 and the result in Fig­ure 21, this allows us to change the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the win­dows, so that the small win­dow now occu­pies all the ver­ti­cal space.

changing the screen layout of multiple windows in blender
Fig. 20: In this case the win­dows are not com­bined but their dis­tri­b­u­tion on the screen changes.
Fig. 21: Result of the previous operation.
Fig. 21: Resul­ta­do de la operación anterior.

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