Figure: The NetView Actions Region
The Actions region in the upper left contains a set of buttons which perform actions on the view. At the very top of the region is a toggle switch which provides convenient switching on and off of the display. When the display is switched off, the View and Scale regions will not be updated by the processes in the view's updater list, regardless of changes to the state of the network. (see section 6.1.3 Window Views).
To the right of the Display toggle is the Coordinate Box. The Coordinate Box displays the current location (X,Y,Z) of objects when they are moved and the size of objects when they are reshaped. At other times, the box remains empty.
Below the display toggle and Coordinate Box are Mode Buttons: Select, View, Move, ReShape, ReScale, and Rotate. These buttons are mutually exclusive, so only one may be pressed at a given time. Selecting one of these buttons enables a different mode of interaction with the View Region, and are described further in that section of the manual. (see section 10.7.3 The View Region)
Below the Mode Buttons are the Major Action Buttons: Build All, Connect All, Update, and Init. Each of these buttons performs an action when the button is released. Sometimes one or more of these buttons will be hi-lighted, suggesting that the button's action should probably be performed due to the current state of the network.
The Build All button creates units in all of the networks layers in
accordance with the n_units
field of the Layer and the Layer's
geometry. The Connect All button creates connections on all the
units in accordance with projections and projection specs of the
network's layers (see section 10.1 The Network Object).
The Update button refreshes the View to reflect the current state of the network. In most cases the network will have communicated its changes to the NetView, however if the NetView appears to be out of sync, the "Update" button will update it accordingly. The Init button resets the view so that the network is scaled to fit in the window. ReScale operations on the network objects as well as Move and Rescale operations on the view region itself are undone when the "Init" button is pressed. To reinitialize the projection points or the positions of the Layers' names select the corresponding function from the Actions menu of the NetView. (see section 6.4 The "Actions" Menu).
Below the Major Action Buttons are the Minor Action Buttons. The names of these buttons change to reflect the possible actions to be performed on the objects currently selected in the View Region. In most cases the lower two buttons will provide Remove and Edit actions for the selected objects. The upper two buttons typically provide actions used for creating new network objects and connecting them. For more information on how to use these buttons to build networks, see section 10.8 Building Networks Using the Viewer.
At the bottom of the Action region is the Monitor Values menu. This
menu provides a set of actions used for monitoring the values displayed
in the NetView. To monitor values the user needs to create a
MonitorStat statistic which handles the sampling and logging of the
monitored values. To create the MonitorStat, the user first selects the
network objects in the View Region to be monitored. Then after a member
of the "Member Region" is selected, the user may select New from the
Monitor Values menu. A dialog is then presented which asks the user
for the process grain at which the values are to be monitored. The
process grain is used to determine when the values are sampled from the
network. In addition the process determines which Logs the sampled
values are stored in. The dialog also asks the user for the network
aggregation operator and whether or not aggregate statistics should be
created in higher level processes. For simple monitoring, the default
values of COPY
and "NO" respectively will suffice. For more
complicated monitoring the behavior of these variables is further
explained in the statistics section of this manual
(see section 12.8.2 Monitoring Network State Variables).
The Monitor Values menu also provides selections which allow the user to Edit, Remove, or change the objects or variables of previously created MonitorStats. To change the network objects which a MonitorStat is monitoring, simply select the objects in the "View Region" and choose Set Objects from the menu. To change the variable which is being monitored simply select the desired variable from the "Member Region" of the NetView and choose Set Variable from the menu.