Status indicators
ForceCanvas continuously classifies your model and reports what it finds without being asked: status and advisory badges in the footer, and a stability overlay on the canvas itself. This page covers what each one means.
The structure status badge
Always visible along the bottom edge while a structure exists. It answers one question: can this be solved, and if so, does the section matter?
Exactly enough supports and members to be solvable by statics alone. Reactions and member forces follow from equilibrium, so the section and material make no difference to the answer.
More restraint than equilibrium alone can resolve. The structure still solves, but load distributes according to relative stiffness, so the section, material and beam theory now genuinely affect the result. The badge shows the degree, e.g. (DI: 2).
A mechanism: some part of the structure is free to move. Nothing is solved while this is showing. Add or reposition supports until it clears.
The beam stability overlay
Where the footer badge judges the whole structure, the canvas overlay marks individual members. Green bands straddling a member mean the solver considers it stable and is computing forces for it.
A member with no bands is not being solved. That usually means it isn't adequately restrained, or it's construction geometry, which never carries force. Toggle the overlay from the toolbar's Show/Hide menu.
This is a different idea from the geometry constraint colors, which describe whether your sketch is fully defined. A fully constrained sketch can still be an unstable structure, and vice versa. See the Canvas Legend.
Advisory badges
Two amber badges can appear alongside the status badge. Neither blocks a solve; they flag that an input is likely to make the answer less trustworthy. Both appear only on indeterminate structures, because that is the only case where the section changes the result. Clicking either opens the Materials panel.
The canvas is still on the default section, which is almost certainly not the section you're designing. Set a real one before trusting the numbers.
At least one member is too stocky for the active beam theory. In Euler-Bernoulli mode that means stocky enough for EB, which ignores shear, to drift from the Timoshenko answer. In Timoshenko mode only extreme cases are flagged, where the section is so large for the member that a beam model stops being meaningful. The exact rule is on the Materials & Sections page.