Installation

EM Tools is a Blender extension. The recommended install path is the drag-and-drop card on the Extended Matrix website, which sets up the EM Blender repository for you and installs the extension in one gesture. This page also covers the offline / manual path for users on restricted networks, the development setup, and the yEd palette note (since the palette is part of the EM language toolchain, not of this manual).

Quick install (recommended)

Open the install card at extendedmatrix.org/tools/em-tools. The card picks the right build for your OS and Blender version, and exposes a drag-and-drop handle:

1. Drag the handle into the Blender window. The first drop adds the Extended Matrix repository to Blender’s Extensions list.

2. Drop a second time. EM Tools installs from the repository.

3. Tick the checkbox next to EM Tools in the Extensions panel to enable it. The EM Tools panels appear in the 3D Viewport sidebar.

Future EM Tools releases arrive as automatic updates from the repository — no further action needed.

System requirements

• Blender 4.4 LTS or later.

• OS: Windows (x64), macOS (Apple Silicon / arm64), macOS (Intel x64, Blender 4.4 / 4.5 only — Blender 5.x dropped Intel binaries), Linux (x64).

• 4 GB RAM (8 GB recommended), 500 MB free disk for the extension and its bundled wheels.

The extension installs all Python dependencies automatically.

Offline / manual install

For restricted networks, mirrored installations, or if you prefer to pin a specific build:

1. Visit the GitHub Releases page and download the .zip matching your Blender version and OS. Different .zip builds exist per OS × Blender ABI; the filename encodes the combination (for example em_tools-v1.5.3-macosx-arm64-blender51.zip for Blender 5.1 on Apple Silicon).

2. In Blender, open Edit → Preferences → Get Extensions → Install from Disk… and select the downloaded .zip.

3. Tick the box next to EM Tools to enable it.

The extension installs Python dependencies automatically; no manual pip install is needed.

Updating EM Tools

• Quick install path: Blender follows the Extended Matrix repository for you; updates arrive automatically on Blender’s next Check for Updates cycle (configurable under Get Extensions → ⚙ → Online).

• Offline / manual path: download the new .zip, uninstall the previous version in Blender’s Extensions panel, restart Blender, and re-install from disk.

Importing the EM palette in yEd

The yEd palette is part of the EM language toolchain, not of EM Tools. The canonical walkthrough lives in the EM language manual:

• Setting up the yEd palette — concept page, palette download link, and step-by-step yEd Edit → Manage Palette → Import Section… walkthrough.

The palette is required only when you author or edit an EM graph in yEd. EM Tools itself reads any standard EM .graphml regardless of whether the authoring used yEd, the unified em_data.xlsx flow, or AI-assisted generation via StratiMiner.

Development setup

Contributors and developers should follow Development Setup instead — it covers the dev-venv setup, the wheel pipeline used by em.sh, and the s3dgraphy editable-install pattern for working against the in-development library.