> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.quiva.ai/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Building a form > The form editor — the palette, the canvas and the inspector, plus generating a layout from a description and previewing before you save Forms are built in the **form editor**, a full-page, three-column screen. Reach it from **Manage Record Sets**, or from the "…" menu on a Record Set in a Space's Records tab, where the entry is labelled **Form Editor**. A form can only place fields that already exist. If the Record Set has no schema yet the canvas says so — add the properties first, from the **View & edit the schema** control in the header. *** ## The three columns Everything you can add, on the left. Drag a tile onto the canvas, or click it to drop it at the end. The form itself, laid out as rows. This is what the person filling it in will see. Settings for whatever is selected — a field, a row, a repeater, an element, or the form as a whole when nothing is selected. ### The palette Four collapsible sections: | Section | Holds | | --------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **Layout** | Row shapes — one to four even columns, and uneven splits like 2 : 1, 1 : 3 and 1 : 2 : 1. Dropping one inserts an empty row. | | **Input Types** | The controls people type into. See [Fields and elements](/forms/elements). | | **Typography** | Headings, paragraphs, notes, links and alerts — text on the form that is not a question. | | **Containers** | The **Repeater**, for a repeating block, and cards for grouping a section visually. | **Dropping an input does not bind it to a field.** A newly placed input is *unbound* — it shows on the canvas but has no property behind it and stores nothing. Select it and use the inspector's binding control to point it at a schema property. Unbound inputs are stripped when the form is saved. ### The canvas The canvas is a stack of rows, each row a grid of columns. Fields sit in the columns. * Drag a tile from the palette onto a row to place it; drag a placed field to move it. * Rows can be reordered. * The arrow keys move the selection and **Enter** opens it; **Escape** clears it. * A repeater gets its own miniature canvas inside the row, laid out the same way. ### The inspector What the inspector offers depends on what is selected. | Selection | Tabs | | ------------------------------ | ---------------------------------------- | | A placed field | **Configure**, **Validation**, **Rules** | | A row | **Layout**, **Rules** | | A repeater | **Configure**, **Rules** | | A heading, note, alert or card | **Configure**, **Rules** | | Nothing | **Form settings** | **Configure** holds the presentation settings — label, placeholder, helper text, spacing, default value, and for choice inputs the list of options. **Validation** holds the constraints — required, minimum and maximum, decimal places, date bounds, item and file limits. **Rules** is where conditional logic is authored; see [Form rules](/forms/form-rules). *** ## Form settings Click empty space to deselect, and the inspector shows the form as a whole: the gap between rows, plus three controls. Opens **Generate form**. Describe the form you want in plain language — type `@` to reference a field by name from the schema — and press **Generate**. What comes back **replaces the whole canvas**, so generate first and refine by hand, rather than the other way round. If it cannot build a layout it says so and leaves the canvas alone. Opens **Form logic**, a read-only overview of every conditional rule on the form, grouped by the element it affects: which fields each condition watches, what the condition says in plain English, and what it drives. It also flags a rule that reads a field which is **not placed on this form** — a common cause of a rule that never fires. Disabled while the form has no rows. Edits the layout as JSON directly. It is an escape hatch for administrators and is not offered to most accounts. *** ## The header Along the top: a back arrow, the form switcher, the **Edit / Preview** tabs, undo and redo, and **Save**. Save stays disabled until something changes. The switcher shows `Record Set › Form` and carries icon controls for: * **Edit form title & description** * **Duplicate form** * **Add form** * **View & edit the schema** * **Add flow** / **Edit flow** — see [Form flows](/forms/form-flows) * **Delete form** — disabled on the last remaining form A warning triangle appears in the header when the schema marks a field required but the form does not place it. Hover it for the list. Such a form can never be submitted successfully: the service insists on a value for a field nobody was asked for. *** ## Preview before you save The **Preview** tab renders the form exactly as someone filling it in would see it, and its submit control runs the **real** validation — both the placed-field checks and the schema checks — then reports the result without saving anything. Editing chrome disappears; conditional rules start evaluating against what you type. Answer the question that drives your conditional logic both ways and watch the dependent rows appear and disappear. You get either the list of validation failures or a confirmation that validation passed — with an explicit reminder that nothing was saved. Preview never writes. Saving the form is a separate, deliberate step. Preview is the only place a conditional rule is genuinely exercised before real people meet it. A rule the engine cannot run is skipped rather than obeyed — the field stays visible and the rule does nothing — so a form carrying rules should never be saved without being previewed both ways. See [when a rule cannot be evaluated](/forms/form-rules#when-a-rule-cannot-be-evaluated). *** ## Saving Saving sends **every** form on the Record Set — the one on screen merged into the copy of the others loaded when the editor opened. Two people editing two different forms of the same Record Set at the same time will therefore undo each other's work. Edit one at a time. Switching to another form in the switcher with unsaved edits prompts first: **Unsaved changes — switch forms and discard them?** Switching discards them; there is no per-form draft. Changing a form never touches records already saved. It changes only what is asked for next time.