D3PLOT 22.1

Using Menus with "Object Type" Selection

Selection takes place using a system of cascading "object menus", combined with screen-picking, area selection and keyed in data.

Primary selection of object type

In whatever context you are operating, here BLANK , you will be presented with the primary menu of object types to operate upon.

In this example the user has chosen PARTS from the range of possible categories. The list of categories available will depend on the operation being carried out, the model contents, and the window tabs.

To return to a different object type, click the OBJECT TYPE button. This will deselect all entities and display the primary menu of obejct types again.

Selection of objects from the menu list

Once an object category has been selected you are presented with a list of possible choices. In this case there are two models, each with several parts, and the user has selected one part from model 1 and two from model 2.

Objects can be selected or deselected (by clicking on them again) at will.

You can also use

All	To select all eligible items	Note that All , None and I (nvert) only operate upon what is shown in the menu for reasons that will become apparent below.
None	To deselect all eligible items
I ( invert )	To invert the current selection

Of the other buttons at the top of this panel:

Opt (ions)	Further options (refresh and blanking)
Filter	Applies "filtering" to what is shown
Vis	Maps a panel showing further "visible" picking options
Key_In	Maps a panel allowing you to key in label ranges directly
Sk (etch)	Sketches what is currently selected.

Using Filter to limit what appears in the menu

In some cases the list may be hundreds of items long, and a method of cutting down what is displayed is required. This is provided by the FILTER button at the top of this box.

This allows you to control what is displayed in the selection menu by providing a series of tests against objects are compared before they are included. The tests vary by object type, those for PARTS are shown here. By default all tests are unset ( ANY ), but you can set any combination: multiple ones combine in effect.

An example of setting a Filter

Here the Thickness ... option for PARTS has been selected.

You are presented with all thicknesses in the model(s), and can choose one. The ANY default may be chosen to revert to no filtering by this category.

Some filter types are screen-pickable. If so, the Vis button in the filter menu is active. You can either select an explicit row, or use Vis and screen-pick from the current image.

In the example shown here the user has selected 5.0 as the thickness filter. This causes the selection menu to be updated immediately to show only those PARTs with thickness 5.0.

Note that the ALL and NONE options will now only operate on the five parts shown here. They will not affect the selection status of anything picked previously that does not now appear in the menu list.

Using Text Filter to search by text string

By typing something into the text filter box you will limit what is displayed in the main object menu to items that match that string.

To cancel text filtering simply delete the contents of the box, and it will revert to showing <No text filter>.

Text matching is not case sensitive. White space at the beginning and endis ignored, however embedded white space in a string is considered when pattern matching. In addition filtering supports the following "wildcard" characters:

? means match any single character
* means match any number of characters.

These may be used any number of times in a string, for example " *quick*fox* " will match " The quick brown fox jumped ".
The string is considered to have * at its beginning and end, so typing in " seat" is equivalent to typing in " *seat* ".

Sorting the object menu contents

By default object menus are present in M odel/ L abel order, referred to as M/L, meaning

All items in Model #1, sorted into ascending order by item label
All items in Model #2, sorted by ditto
etc

However it is possible to resort object menus dynamically by clicking on the menu title bar, which will cycle the sort process through:

A-Z (alphabetic sorting by item title)
Z-A (reverse alphabetic sorting)
0-9 (ascending numeric sorting by item label)
9-0 (reverse numeric sorting)
M/L (default M odel/ L abel sorting)

Further clicks will repeat the cycle above.

The menu title row changes to show the current sorting method.

The Opt(ions) popup menu

Refresh Menus	Refreshes the current menu, updating it to reflect changes to things such as titles and set contents which may not have triggered an automatic menu refresh

Blank selected	Blanks the selected items
Unblank selected	Unblanks the selected items, turning on their entity visibility switches if necessary in order to make them visible
Only selected	Blanks everything except the selected items, again turning on their entity visibility switches if required.

When "Only" is used all other items in all models will be blanked, regardless of whether this object menu refers to a single model or multiple ones. This is necessary if "only" the selected items are to be visible.

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