9.2 The Project Viewer

The Project Viewer

Figure: The Project Viewer

In its default mode, the project viewer displays all the networks, environments, processes, and logs in your project using colored icons for each. By pressing the View Specs button, it will switch to viewing the specs for this project, and then View Project will switch back. We begin by describing project mode, and then spec mode.

9.2.1 Project View Mode

In project mode, the following are the default colors:

Pink
Networks
Green
Environments
Yellow
Schedule processes
Light Blue
Group of statistics within a schedule process
Blue
The statistics themselves
Light Orange
Group of processes within a schedule process
Orange
The processes themselves
Violet
Logs

Non-obvious actions you can perform on icons:

Single-click with left-mouse-button (LMB)
Will select or deselect item, and update the action buttons at the left of the display.
Double-click with LMB
On objects with windows (networks, environments, logs), will iconify or view the object. On processes, will iconify or de-iconify the object (an iconified process is collapsed so that you can't see all the sub-processes below it). Iconifying processes is important if you have many process hierarchies -- they will not all fit in the display at once. Iconified processes are identifiable as being not colored.
Single-click with right-mouse-button (RMB)
Will bring up the edit dialog for that object.
Shift-LMB or middle-mouse-button
Extends the selection to include multiple items.

Note that because much of what happens in the project view concerns processes, you may need to read section 12 Processes and Statistics to understand everything that goes on in this view.

Effects of action buttons on left side of display are (note that where multiple are listed, the same button does different things depending on what is selected -- they are described in order from left-right, top-bottom).

Minimize
Shrinks the display to the smallest vertical size. Note that at this size, you can re-expand the display later by hitting the top of the maximize button, which will be just visible at the bottom of the window.
Maximize
Expands the display vertically to fit all of the items in the display.
View Specs
Switches the display to viewing specs (mode described below).
Select
This is the standard mode -- causes mouse clicks to select objects.
Move
When in this mode, the mouse will move objects to different positions within their respective groups (does not work for schedule processes). For example, you can rearrange the order of statistics within a schedule process by moving them.
Edit
Pulls up an Edit Dialog for selected object(s).
Init
Initializes the display (this is rarely necessary, as the display is usually automatically updated when needed).
Iconify, DeIconify, Iconify All
Controls the iconification of windows or processes.
Show Links, No Links
Either shows or turns off showing the links between a selected item and other objects -- the links show you how everything is connected up in the project. Links are drawn as solid lines for cases where a process uses the object for processing (e.g., The network used by the train process is shown as a pink solid line). Dashed lines indicate that the process updates the given object (e.g., the Trial process typically has a dashed line to the network, indicating that it updates it).
Change Type, Rmv Updater, Add Updater
If one object is selected, Change Type will allow you to change the type of that object. If an object that can be updated (e.g., a network) and a process object are selected, then it will allow you to either add or remove an updating link between these objects.
New Stat, Set Agg, Set Agg Link
If a schedule process is selected, New Stat will allow creating a new statistic in this object -- you will be prompted for whether to make it in the loop or final stats group. Note that if you know where you want to put the new stat, and that stat group (loop_stats or final_stats) already appears in the view (because it has other stats in it), then you can just click right on the stat group and hit New Stat from there. If a statistic is selected, Set Agg will allow you to set the kind of aggregation this statistic should use. If two statistics are selected, Set Agg Link will set one statistic to aggregate from the other (order can be selected in a subsequent dialog).
Ctrl Panel
If a schedule process is selected, this will bring up its control panel.
New Process, New Agg, Transfer Obj
If a schedule process is selected, this will allow you to create a new process in a process group (init_procs, loop_procs, final_procs) that is not currently shown in the display. Note that if the group you want is already shown in the display, then just click on it and do New Process from there. If a stat is selected, New Agg will create a new aggregator of that statistic. If a stat or non-schedule process together with a stat or process subgroup is selected, Transfer Obj will transfer the stat/process to the group. If a stat/process is selected together with a schedule process, Transfer Obj will bring up a dialog asking for which subgroup of that schedule process to transfer into.
New Process, New Stat, New Sub/Super, New Link, Transfer Obj
If a stat group (loop_stats, final_stats) is selected, New Stat will create a new statistic in it. If a process group (init_procs, loop_procs, final_procs) is selected, New Process will create a new process in it. If one schedule process is selected, this New Sub/Super will prompt for creating a new schedule process above (super) or below (sub) the selected one in the process hierarchy. If two schedule processes are selected, New Link will prompt for linking one process into a process group (init_procs, loop_procs, final_procs) of the other (direction is determined by a dialog, but default is that to to-be-linked process is first selected). Also see next case: If a schedule process and a process group (init_procs, loop_procs, final_procs) on another schedule process are selected, then the schedule process will be linked into the process group with a New Link. If a group and a non-schedule process object are selected, then Transfer Obj will transfer the object into the group.
Remove Obj(s), Remove Link
Will remove object(s) that are selected, or if two objects are selected and they are linked, the link will be severed.

In summary, it should be clear that the project viewer enables you to establish linkages between different objects, and to perform detailed configuration of the process hierarchy.

9.2.2 Spec View Mode

Spec view mode shares much in common with project view mode. Specs are arranged in the order they appear in the .specs menu, left-to-right and then top-to-bottom. The default colors are:

Pink
Unit Spec
Green
Con Spec
Yellow
Projection Spec
Blue
Layer Spec

Many of the the action buttons are similar to those in the project view mode, with the following special actions:

Edit
Set Spec
Brings up the view of the default network in the .networks group, and applies the selected spec to whatever objects are selected in the network view. This is equivalent to performing Selections/Set XX Spec in the NetView (see section 10.8 Building Networks Using the Viewer for more details) where XX is the type of Spec that was selected. This provides a convenient way of applying a given spec to selected parts of the network.
Show Spec
This is like the inverse of Set Spec -- it selects whatever objects in the network are currently using the selected spec.
New Child
On either a spec or the children group of a spec, will prompt for creating a new child spec of the selected item.