Module 1 - Overview of the SIMPLIS Environment / 1.2 The SIMetrix/SIMPLIS User Interface |
The SIMetrix/SIMPLIS user interface can be configured with general option settings and the menus items and keyboard shortcuts to these menus can be customized by the user. This topic introduces the user interface and how to customize the user interface using the built-in dialogs. In 1.2.2 Customizing the User Interface, you will learn how to customize the user interface using scripts.
In this topic:
In this topic, you will learn how the user interface is constructed and two ways you can customize the SIMetrix/SIMPLIS user interface:
To get started, you will set some global options that will help with this course material. Many of these options will also help in your day-to-day work with SIMetrix/SIMPLIS. Once set, the global options persist and are used to configure SIMetrix/SIMPLIS every time you use the program.
To edit the global options, follow these steps:
At this point, you have set some global options to your personal preferences. Next you will learn how menus and keyboard shortcuts are defined and how you can add keyboard shortcuts to existing menu items.
Every menu item and keyboard shortcut is implemented with the SIMetrix/SIMPLIS script language. The menus you see on the different windows are not a permanent part of the program but are created from scratch every time the program starts. This gives you a great deal of flexibility to add new menu items as well as moving or deleting existing menu items.
Keyboard shortcut keys can be assigned using a dialog or a script. In this section you will learn how to edit menus using the dialog method, in section 1.2.2 Customizing the User Interface, you will learn how to use scripts to modify menus and keyboard shortcuts.
In this exercise, you will assign the "Ctrl+P" keyboard shortcut to run the
menu selection.To verify the new key binding:
Every menu item or keyboard shortcut executes either a SIMetrix/SIMPLIS script or a simple script command. A script file is a sequence of commands or calls to other scripts. The user interface is built from a set of approximately 900 scripts. Here is a short example using the edit_options.sxscr script:
The edit_options script is a built-in script and can be downloaded in another browser window by clicking here.
From a functional point of view, there is no difference between using the menu item, the keyboard shortcut (if there is one) or hand-typing the script name into the command line. These user interface scripts are called Built-In or BiScripts and can be downloaded as a zip archive file from the SIMetrix/SIMPLIS Download Links page.
To download the zip archive, follow these steps:
In this topic, you have used the Edit Menu System dialog to modify the user interface. In the next topic, 1.2.2 Customizing the User Interface, you will download and install a set of scripts specially prepared for this training session. These scripts automate the process of setting keyboard shortcuts and further extend the functionality of the user interface.