Profile Editor Menus

In the sections on input and editing we have seen how many of the menus on the display operate. Here we discuss some of the remaining control elements on the display window. There are three pulldown menus in the top left corner of the profile editor display window.

The File menu contains the following items:

The View menu controls the visual display of the sketch. Each geometric entity has an internally defined name associated with it, called the Object Label. Initially the display of these labels is turned off, since their display can clutter the view. However, within the View menu, this and other features of the sketch can be selectively toggled between hide and display states. The features whose display can be controlled are the Auxiliary Objects, the Dimensions, the Dimension Values, the Dimension Labels, and the Object Labels.

The third menu in the upper right of the display, the Mode menu, is only relevant to our feature-based design system, which is not part of the two-dimensional profile editor. Two other menus along the right side of the window which are also irrelevant in the context of the profile editor are the Assembly and Part menus.

Along the top of the window are arrow keys. These are used in the solution modification component of the constraint solver, which we consider in a subsequent portion of the tutorial.

The Regenerate button in the upper right corner was used in the example in the section on input and editing. Pressing this button causes the constraint solver to be called, using the current dimensioned sketch as input.