{ 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.

All the IMPORTANT information is summarized in the following TUTORIAL FROM MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL

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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.*

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.

*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.*

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

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.

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.

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.

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.