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Author EM in yEd, render in Blender

End-to-end recipe that takes a freshly drawn Extended Matrix from yEd, through the EM Tools Stratigraphy Manager, all the way to a navigable Blender scene with proxies linked to the graph. Three tools, three manuals, one workflow.

Tools used: yed-paletteem-tools

This workflow is a starter / pattern example for the new workflows collection. It is currently marked draft: true while the body is being filled in. When the body is final, flip draft to false.

What you’ll do

You’ll start from a stratigraphic sequence already excavated and documented in field notes, draw it as an Extended Matrix in yEd using the EM palette, hand the resulting GraphML file to EM Tools, build proxy volumes inside Blender for each stratigraphic unit, and end up with a 3D scene where every proxy carries the metadata of its matching graph node.

What you’ll need

  • Blender 4.4 LTS or later — installed via the drag-and-drop card on extendedmatrix.org.
  • yEd Graph Editor — free download from yworks.com. The EM palette for yEd is the language’s authoring surface; install it following the Setting up the yEd palette walkthrough in the EM language manual.
  • A site or context to model. For a first try, a small two-or-three stratum cut is plenty — the workflow scales unchanged to larger projects.

Steps

1. Author the matrix in yEd

Follow the EM language manual’s Draw your first Extended Matrix walkthrough. Save the resulting .graphml.

2. Open the graph in EM Tools

In Blender, open the EM Tools sidebar (right side of the 3D Viewport). Use the EM Setup panel to import the .graphml. The Stratigraphy Manager panel populates with one row per stratigraphic unit.

See the EM Setup panel reference and the Stratigraphy Manager reference for the details.

3. Model proxies for each unit

For each US in the Stratigraphy Manager list, create a volumetric proxy that approximates the spatial extent of that unit. The Build proxies how-to in the EM Tools manual walks through this end-to-end.

In the Stratigraphy Manager, use the link button to connect each proxy mesh to its corresponding graph row. From this point the proxy carries the row’s metadata — selecting the proxy highlights the row, toggling the row’s visibility hides/shows the proxy.

5. Save and iterate

Save the .blend alongside the .graphml. The two files are the canonical pair — the .graphml is the matrix, the .blend is the 3D substrate. Edit either side independently and re-import / refresh to sync.

Where to go next

  • Publish to the web: see the upcoming Start from a published dataset → publish your own recipe (Heriverse integration).
  • Add survey data: see the upcoming Drone survey → reconstruction recipe (3DSC integration).
  • Build a 2D plate (prospetto / sezione) from the resulting scene: see the DP-34 Label & Layout System page on the dev tracker for the upcoming MVP.

Workflow pattern (notes for editors)

This workflow demonstrates the canonical pattern:

  1. What you’ll do — single paragraph in plain language.
  2. What you’ll need — links INTO each tool’s install path, never embedded.
  3. Steps — short narrative sections; each step that uses a tool links into the tool’s reference at the right depth (panel reference, mini-tutorial, how-to-start, or — for grammar patterns — an EM language cookbook entry). The workflow never duplicates content already in a manual.
  4. Where to go next — cross-workflow pointers + dev-tracker links for in-flight work.

When draft becomes false, this recipe goes live at /workflows/author-em-in-yed-then-blender/.