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Saving, Exporting & Files

The .locus file

What Locus Studio stores in a saved design, and why it reopens exactly as you left it.

A Locus design saves to a single, self-contained file. One file holds everything about the design - nothing lives in a sidecar or a separate library you have to keep next to it.

What's inside

A .locus file stores three things together:

Your construction: every point, line, circle, arc, region, and boolean you've drawn, exactly as placed.
Your node graph: the generator side of the design: the nodes and the wires between them.
The bridge between them: the links that record which node output produced which piece of geometry on the drawing.

Because all three travel together, a saved design is complete on its own. You can move it, back it up, or hand it to another machine, and it reopens as one intact document.

Re-evaluation on open

Anything your nodes generate is recomputed when you open the file. The stored result is what you see immediately, but the node graph re-evaluates so the design is live again the moment it loads - ready to adjust, not frozen.

This is why a generated pattern comes back correct even after edits elsewhere in the node graph: the file remembers the recipe, not just the picture.

The file extension

New designs save with the .locus extension.

Older designs saved as .locus.json still open normally - you don't need to convert them. When you save such a file again, keep whichever name you prefer; both are recognized.

[!TIP] Treat the .locus file as the master. Exports like SVG or DXF are one-way, flattened snapshots for output - they don't carry your construction or node graph back. Keep the .locus if you'll want to edit the design later. See Exporting SVG and Exporting DXF.