This section describes some general operations on a Canvas View, which represents the contents in an assembly.
To create new parts in the model, see the Creating Parts section. Parts are always snapped to a grid point and each grid point can only accommodate one part.
To create links, see the Connecting Parts with Links section.
To create subassemblies, see the Creating Subassemblies section.
To select any component on the canvas, first make sure that the Select button with an arrow is pressed down in the Build toolbar.
To select a part, click on the part or its label on the canvas. It will be highlighted with a box which has resizing knobs at the corners and sides.
To select a link, click on the link line. The hot spot of the mouse pointer is at the tip of the arrow. There is some tolerance built-in to the picking mechanism. However, it requires that you place the hot spot of the pointer somewhere near the center of the link's line path. Once selected, the link will be highlighted with control knobs displayed for moving operations.
To select the port that a link is attached to a part, first you have to select the link to reveal the control knob for the port. After that, moving the mouse pointer to the port knob will change the pointer to an up-arrow.
You can double click on the component to invoke the associated Properties dialog for examining and modifying its properties.
There are two ways to select a group of parts:
Press the Shift key before clicking on the multiple parts desired.
Click on an empty area to start a selection box and drag until the box covers the parts to be selected. All parts that are within or intersect with the selection box will be selected. You can also add more selected parts by pressing the Shift key and clicking on the additional parts.
Group operations currently available are moving, deletion and building completely connected graphs, explained later in this section.
Initially, a part is displayed with an icon on the canvas. There may be situations that a part needs to be resized:
To emphasize the part.
To indicate the part's size and orientation with regard to other parts.
To make room for ports and connecting links -- for clarity.
SansGUI allows any part to be resized to a desired rectangle no smaller than the icon size. Do the following to resize the part:
Make sure the Select button is depressed in the Build toolbar.
Select the part to reveal the resizing knobs.
Move the mouse pointer to the desired resizing knob. The pointer will be changed to a double arrow cursor that indicates the resizing direction.
Drag the resizing knob until the desired part size is reached. The part's icon is always displayed at the center of the part and is never moved during resizing.
When there are enlarged parts, it is possible to have parts overlapping each other. Some may be opaqued by others. SansGUI maintains the depth (Z) of the Canvas View for each part. To change the Z-order for the overlapping parts, do the following:
Right click on the inside of the part to be changed to obtain the context menu.
Use Bring to Front or Send to Back menu items to change the Z-order.
Components in the Canvas View can be moved for better arrangements. Before moving, make sure that the Select button in the Build toolbar is depressed.
To move a part, click and drag the part to a new location not being occupied by any other part. When the mouse pointer is turned to a cross with arrow ends, you are able to drag the part around. If the part is moved to a location being occupied, the moving operation is canceled with the part location unchanged. Notice that the connected links are still attached to the moved part.
To move a group, select the group of parts and move the mouse pointer to any of the selected parts. You can drag the whole group while the mouse pointer is turned to a cross with arrow ends. If any part in the group is moved to a location already occupied by some other part, the moving operation is canceled with the whole group's location unchanged. The links connected to all parts in the group are moved accordingly.
To move a link, select and highlight the link with its control knobs revealed. Move the mouse pointer to any of the control knobs to move it, while the cursor is changed to an up-arrow. You can move a port in the part by dragging the port's control knob around. It may, however, be restricted to certain sides of the part rectangle depending upon the port definition.
For deletion operations, you need to make sure that the Select button in the Build toolbar is depressed.
To delete a part, right click on the part and select Delete from the context menu. All the links that are connected to the deleted part will also be deleted.
To delete a link, right click on the link and select Delete from the context menu.
To delete a group of parts, select the group first, right click on any part of the group and select Delete from the context menu. All the links that are connected to any deleted part in the group will also be deleted.
There may be accidental operations that require to be reverted. The Canvas View maintains an undo and a redo buffer for multiple levels of undo and redo operations. Each canvas operation is recorded in these buffers so that the undo and redo operations can be available to you. Right click on any empty area in the Canvas View to obtain a context menu. From the context menu you will find Undo <Action> and Redo <Action> menu items where the <Action> may be substituted with the actual action to be undone or redone. Select the Undo or Redo actions as necessary. As the menu items indicated, you can use the keyboard short cuts Ctrl+U for undo and Ctrl+R for redo operations. You can also find Undo <Action> and Redo <Action> in the Edit pull-down menu.
You can adjust the levels of undo and redo operations stored in the buffers according to your needs and your system's memory configuration. This is described in the Tuning Environment Parameters section in Chapter 7.
The Canvas View has been tuned to work with most of the supported screen resolutions, display monitor sizes, and printing with the default 100% zoom factor. In certain combinations or operations, zooming in or out may be desirable. To do this, simply use the zooming buttons in the View toolbar. The Canvas View has to be active for the View toolbar to be effective; otherwise, click on any empty spot in the Canvas View to activate it.
1 : 1: Reset the view to 100% zooming.
+: Enlarge the current Canvas View by a 5% increment.
-: Reduce the current Canvas View by a 5% increment.
Fit Long: Fit the entire canvas space to the long side of a page (US letter size). It will be equivalent to using 40% zoom factor. When printed out, the canvas area outside the short side of the paper will be truncated.
Fit Short: Fit the entire canvas space to the short side of a page (US letter size). It will be equivalent to using 30% zoom factor. When printed out, the whole canvas area will be centered along the long side of the paper.
Zoom Factor Box: You can select a zoom factor from the drop-down list, or enter a zoom factor manually. The minimum zoom factor is 20% and the maximum is 1000%. Entering the percentage mark % is optional.
User Zoom: This is a two-button function used in combination. Click on the left button (a zoom icon) to using the user zoom factor saved previously and click on the right button (a green dot) to save the current zoom factor for future uses.
There are three ways to pan the Canvas View Window:
Use the horizontal and vertical scroll bars attached to the view window.
Press and hold down the Ctrl key and drag the canvas around.
Use the Pan Window activated via the Pan Win button in the View toolbar. Drag the highlighted window around to suit your need. When the zoom factor of the view is changed, the highlighted window size is changed accordingly.
You can use the Center button in the View toolbar to immediately center the Canvas View. Also, when a part or link is selected from a Tree View in the left pane while it is outside the Canvas View Window, SansGUI will put the component into view by scrolling it to the center of the window.
The upper-left corner of the Canvas View window provides the printing mechanism with a reference origin, i.e., the printed output will start from the upper-left corner of the Canvas View and expand to the right and down until the right and bottom edges of the canvas space or the paper edges are reached. Use File>Print Preview or the Preview button in the File toolbar to see an approximation of the printed output.
The labels (names or identifiers) of the parts, ports, and links can be toggled on and off in the Canvas View. Simply click on the Part Label, Port Label, and Link Label buttons in the Build toolbar, respectively.
There are two modes to display links in the Canvas View:
Normal Mode: The links will be displayed with thin lines only.
Link Value Mode: The links will be displayed with a mix of thick and thin lines, depending on whether the thick line display property of the link is turned on or off.
Use the Link Value button in the Build toolbar to toggle between the two modes.
The display properties of a link can be accessed through the link's context menu, obtained by right clicking on the link path:
Show Thick Line: When turned on, the link will be displayed with a colored thick line when the Canvas View is in the Link Value Mode, described previously.
Show Direction: When turned on, the direction arrow of the link will be displayed. Turn this property off to show that the link is non-directional or bidirectional
Here are the rules of the Canvas View grids, having two different resolutions:
A lower resolution grid is used for part locations. Each grid point can be occupied by at most one part. Parts are always snapped to the grid points.
A higher resolution grid is used for port locations. Multiple ports may use the same grid point. Ports are always snapped to the grid points.
The intermediate control points of links use the same grid as ports. However, snapping to the grid points can be toggled on and off for link drawing.
Use the Grid button in the Build toolbar to toggle the display of the lower resolution grid. Use the Snap button in the same toolbar to toggle snapping of the intermediate link points.
To print out the canvas or a section of the canvas, you can apply the procedures in zooming, panning, toggling on and off labels, the lower resolution grid, or the Link Value mode to satisfy your output requirements. You can use File>Print Preview or the Preview button in the File toolbar to see the output before sending it to a printer. You can also select Print Canvas View... or Print Preview from the right-click context menu to perform these tasks.
To clone a part, right click on the source part to be used for cloning and select Clone Part menu item from the context menu. When the source part contains a subassembly, the entire subassembly tree will be cloned accordingly. The new part will be created near by the source part. You can then move the new part to a place you like.
Right click on any part that is derived from the Assembly_Generic object to obtain a context menu and then select the Open Subassembly menu item to move down the assembly level. To move up to the parent assembly level, use the Move Up button in the Build toolbar, or right click on any empty area of the Canvas View and select Move Up Assembly Level menu item from the context menu.
There are some time-saving operations available in the Edit pull-down menu for building models:
Select All Parts: to select all parts in the current Canvas View, or simply, the current assembly.
Build Complete Graph: to completely connect parts, or create a link for every two parts, in a selected group to form a complete graph. To do this, you need to select a group of parts first and then go to the Edit menu to select this item. A Completely Connected Graph dialog will pop up with options for the new links to be created: Using Link Object, Show Thick Lines, Show Directions, and Silent Update. Please carefully read the Notes section in the dialog because the operation is irreversible. If the link object displayed is not the one to be used, you need to cancel the operation and select the link object from the Link Object box in the Build toolbar. The Silent Update option is checked, by default, for performance reasons. For details on the link display options, please see the paragraph above. Be careful with the link display options because if they are not set to what you would prefer, you will have to manually change them one by one after the complete graph is made.
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SansGUI Modeling and Simulation Environment Version 1.2
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