1 General Principles. General Principles. In this chapter 1-1

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1 1 General Principles In this chapter 1 General Principles 1.1 User Interface 1.2 Title bar 1.3 Menu bar 1.4 Standard Toolbar 1.5 The drawing area 1.6 Component tabs 1.7 Status Bar 1.8 Manipulating Components 1.9 Moving Components 1.10 Activating components to edit 1.11 Handles 1.12 Stretch and Rotate 1.13 Snapping 1.14 Preventing Components from Snapping 1.15 Disconnecting Components 1.16 Groups 1.17 OK, Cancel or Apply 1.18 Deleting 1.19 Entering fractions in dimensions 1.20 Apply to in Dialogs for Settings and Properties 1.21 Apply to mode on component menus 1.22 Hot Keys 1-1

2 1.1 User Interface The user interface consists of the Title bar, Menu bar, Toolbar, Component Menu, Drawing surface, and the Status bar. Title bar Component menus Drawing surface Menu bar Toolbar Horizontal tabs Mobile Tab (chapter 2) Mobile Accessories Tab (chapter 3) S1 Tab (chapter 5) Modular Mobile and Lateral (chapter 6) 4-Post and Case Shelving Tab (chapter 7) 4-Post Accessories Tab (chapter 8) Cantilever Tab (chapter 9) Wide Span Tab (chapter 10) Rotary Tab (chapter 11) Universal Weapons Rack Tab (chapter 12) Art Rack Tab (chapter 13) Custom Shelving Tab (chapter 14) Line Drawing 1 Tab (chapter 15) Line Drawing 2 Tab (chapter 16) House Components Tab (chapter 17) Tools Tab (chapter 18) Import and Export Tab Accessories Tab Status bar 1-2

3 1.2 Title bar The title bar contains the Configura version and Spacesaver customized version number. 1.3 Menu bar The menu bar contains the following menus, which are common to many software packages: File, Edit and Help. It also contains the following menus that are specific to Configura: Components, Company, Arrange, View, Scale and Angle. 1.4 Standard Toolbar The toolbar contains functions that are most often used. From the left the buttons are: New, Open, Save, Print, Copy, Cut, Paste, Paste copies of front views, Delete, Undo, Redo, Select rectangle, Select one more group, Group, Ungroup, Scale in, Scale out, Scale rectangle, Scale to all objects, Fast auto photo, Auto photo and Measure. 1.5 The drawing area Configura's drawing area is the core component of the user interface. This is where all your drawing work takes place and where you can develop images. The size of the drawing area is unlimited. 1.6 Component tabs The component menus to the left of the drawing area contain all of Configura's components. There are two rows of tabs in the component menus: The vertical rows of tabs allow you to select different groups of components. These change based on the choice of the horizontal tab selection. The horizontal row which has three tabs: Spacesaver, Configura, and Industry. Components placed from the Spacesaver tab are the only components that effect the Bill of Materials. The Spacesaver tab contains customized Spacesaver components. The Configura contains standard Configura Office components. The Industry tab contains industry standard components like industrial shelving and conveyor system components. You move between the different component tabs by clicking on the icons on the tabs. The icon for the line drawing tab, for example, consists of three connected lines, and the icon for the standard components is a camera. 1.7 Status Bar At the bottom of the Configura window is the status bar, which contains three boxes. All except scale can be turned on and off from the File>Control Panel under the General tab. Place a check in the box next to Calculate Price. 1-3

4 1.7.1 Left Area The left-hand box shows two pieces of information. A summary of the prices of components drawn and the consult Spacesaver condition (Chk Sys Info). Configura continually updates the pricing of the drawn components. There will be two asterisks (**) to the left of the price when the system is recalculating the price. A large system may take longer to calculate the complete price. You may see the price increase in increments. The words Chk Sys Info will appear if Configura cannot price a component, When there is a Chk Sys Info then the price will be 0.00 until that condition has been corrected. You can obtain information about why something will not price out by going to Company>System Info from the pull down menus. See the section on Chk Sys Info section under The Company Menu chapter for more detailed information Middle Area The middle box shows the current scale of the items in the drawing area. The scale represents how much the drawing is magnified or zoomed Right Area The right-hand box shows Linear File Inches (LFI), Shelf to Ceiling Clearance (Clear), and Quick Ship (QS). The word Clear will appear as long as the overall height of elevations does not exceed the height set in the Order Information dialog >Room tab. The letters QS will appear as long as no Non Quick ship items have been placed on the drawing. 1.8 Manipulating Components In Configura, all objects are called components. All components are found on the left-hand side of the user interface. If the cursor is placed over a component (without clicking) a help text (tool tip) will appear containing brief information about that component Placement of Components Most components are placed on the drawing surface according to the same technique of pick and place. Select the desired component from the component menu by clicking on it, move the cursor to the drawing surface and click anywhere to place the component. A new, similar component is automatically given. Throughout this document, the term click will refer to left mouse button clicking and releasing. The term click and hold will be used if the instructions require holding the left mouse button down during an action. Dragging will refer to the action of click and hold while moving the mouse. This technique is used mostly when stretching objects to a different size Canceling Placement of Components To cancel or stop placing additional components you can: Move the cursor anywhere outside of the drawing surface Hit the ESC key on the keyboard Be careful not to accidentally move the cursor outside the drawing area or you will have to reselect the component to continue placing it. 1.9 Moving Components To move a component that has already been placed on the drawing surface click on it with the left mouse button anywhere except over one of its handles. While keeping the left mouse button depressed drag the component to the desired location or snap it to another component. Make 1-4

5 sure that you are not placing additional components before attempting to move another component Activating components to edit In order to change a component in some way, the component has to be activated first. Some basic principles for activation of components: When a new component is placed on the drawing surface, it is automatically activated. A component that is placed on the drawing surface can be activated when you click on it. In both cases, the yellow snap points become visible. A component loses its activation when you click somewhere on the white part of the drawing surface or on another component. This also happens when a new component is placed on the drawing surface. Only one component at a time can be activated, unless the Ctrl key is pressed while you click on, and thus activate, additional components. By doing this, you have created a temporary group (see below). 1-5

6 1.11 Handles Each component has yellow triangle or square shaped handles on it. These handles can serve as adjustments for size or snap points. They also know the potential and limitations of the different components. For example: controls can only snap to panels. They also allow you to control the characteristics of that component. You can: Attach Disconnect Deactivate (The color of the handle changes from yellow to grey) Reactivate (The color of the handle changes from grey to yellow) Stretch or rotate Delete This is a standard handle. Use this to stretch the size of a component by clicking and dragging. This is a moving symbol. When you see this click and release to move the component These show that two components attached. To separate two components that are attached by clicking and releasing on the yellow triangle. The separated component will be deleted as it cannot exist alone. These show that two components attached and can be seperated. These handles serve two purposes: 1) They act just as square handles in they let you stretch the size of components by click, hold and drag. 2) To separate two components that are attached by clicking and releasing one of them Stretch and Rotate The snap points also enable stretching and rotation of different components: Stretching Most components are stretchable in both length and width and can also be made smaller in both directions. To stretch or to shrink a component, click and hold on a snap point, and drag to the desired length/width. Some components can be stretched immediately when they are being placed on the drawing surface. Some components cannot be stretched when they are attached to another component. Rotation Most components can be rotated. Some components can be rotated immediately when they are placed on the drawing surface. 1-6

7 1.13 Snapping Most components have snap points where they fix to other components. The snap points define Configura's rules concerning which components can snap to which other components. The snap points are yellow triangles or squares. The behavior of two components attaching together is called snapping. Snap points can also be used to stretch and rotate components. You can deactivate snapping by clicking and releasing on a yellow handle. Deactivated snap handles appear grey in color. To reactivate, click and release on the handle again. In some cases you may wish to place a component nearby another without it snapping to that component. You can stop or interrupt the automatic snapping two ways: 1. Turning off a component s snap handle. By clicking on the handles you can switch them between active and inactive. You can tell if a handle has been deactivated by its color, deactivated handles are grey and activated handles are yellow. 2. Hold down the SHIFT key on the keyboard while placing a component. This will not allow it to snap to another component even if it was designed to. When two components are attached to each other, this is indicated by a yellow triangle between them Preventing Components from Snapping Hold down the Shift Key while placing or moving the component to prevent them from attaching to other objects Disconnecting Components When two or more components are linked (snapped) together, each component has a yellow triangular snap point which shows where the components are snapped together. To release components, follow the instructions below: 1. Activate the two components which are snapped together, if they are not already active, by clicking on one of them (a component is active when its yellow snap points are visible). 2. Click on the yellow triangle on the component which you want to release. This can be useful if you wish to add additional carriages into a system. Then you can simply reattach them by dragging them together and their snap points will attach. 1-7

8 1.16 Groups Creating a Temporary Group Temporary groups are used to select multiple objects for moving, rotating, or editing together Creating a group selection set A temporary group can be created in more than one way: 1. Press the Ctrl key while clicking on each of the components that you would like to add to a selection set. Clicking on a selected object will unselect it. 2. Use the Select rectangle button in the toolbar to draw a window around the components to be selected. Click on the button Select rectangle in the toolbar. When the cursor is moved onto the drawing surface, a blue rectangle will appear attached to the cursor. Imagine a rectangle that encapsulates the components that you wish to group. Start at one corner of that area and click and hold while moving the cursor diagonally across the components, until all of them are surrounded by the blue rectangle, then release the mouse button. The blue rectangle will disappear from the cursor and each of the components selected will have their yellow snap points visible. Each of these selection techniques can be used together or independently Ungrouping a selection set To ungroup temporarily selected components simply pick anywhere on the drawing surface in the white area not on another component Creating a Permanent Group Permanent groups are for keeping objects together when any of the grouped items are moved. Group button Sometimes it is necessary to create permanent groups of components. In order to make a permanent group, you have to first define which components you want included in the group by creating a temporary group. Then the Group button will become active and can be selected to create a permanent group. These items will stay grouped until the ungroup button is selected. Ungroup button When selecting a permanent group the Ungroup button is active. To split up the permanent group, select the Ungroup button. When components are permanently grouped together, they will be encapsulated in a blue rectangle with a select area at the middle of the left side. This also contains a snap point for moving or rotating the group. 1-8

9 1.17 OK, Cancel or Apply A changed setting in one of the dialog boxes must be either confirmed or rejected. This is done by clicking on one of the buttons at the bottom of the dialog box: OK, Cancel, or Apply. OK Confirms your choices and closes the dialog box. Click on OK if you know the choice is right or the only choice you want. Apply The changes are carried out, but the dialog box is left open. Click on this button when you are not sure the choice is right, you want to try different alternatives, or you wish to modify several similar components. Cancel Exits the dialog with no changes unless they were applied using the Apply button Deleting Components can be deleted by making them active by clicking on them and hitting the Del key on the keyboard. This works well with individual standalone components. A system by default is all one object. To delete individual Spacesaver components of a system use the Remover tool 1.19 Entering fractions in dimensions Normally the Spacebar is used to put a space between numbers or words. In Configura, the Spacebar locks and unlocks values in the popup edit boxes when placing components. To add a space between numbers, hold down the CTRL key while hitting the Spacebar. For example to enter 12 6 ½ type s\as shown: 12 6 [spacebar] 1/ Apply to in Dialogs for Settings and Properties Most settings dialog boxes for components contain the field Apply to, in which you can choose all the components that you want to change. This can be a group of components, components in a selected room or all the same type of components in the drawing area. Selected Component is the component that has been right clicked from or the component picked on while in the controlling dialog. Group is multiple components that are selected using the select rectangle or selecting several components with the CTRL key. Room is all components in a room All is every component of that type and that carries the same characteristics. The changes can affect, for example, the size, material or color of the components. In the bottom, left-hand corner of these dialog boxes is the pull-down list Apply to. 1-9

10 1.21 Apply to mode on component menus This mode can be set before selecting the usage of a component or using Hot Keys can be switched during the operation of component usage. Apply To: buttons These are found at the top of most component menus. This setting controls the actions of placing or removing components: Single - This allows you to place only one component. For example you can attach panels, one at a time, to each carriage on a system. Side/Range - Use this to speed the application of an item across like items such as the same type of Control or Panel on all Carriages. This will place the same component across one entire side of a system only if those components are designed to attach to them. For example: if Side/Carriage is selected and panels are drawn on one carriage or platform, panels will be placed on each carriage and platform for the entire side of the system. Panels can attach to both platforms and carriages but, controls will only attach to panels that are on carriages. Whole - This works just like the Single Side/Carriage except it will add components to the entire system at one time as opposed to just one side of the system at a time. For example if you were designing a dual entry system you could add panels to both ends of the carriages in a single click OK, Cancel or Apply buttons 1.22 Hot Keys Use Hot keys while placing a component or when a component is selected. Apply To Hot keys: While using the selected component type is one of the following keys to switch between the different apply to modes: S Single R Side/Range W Whole Component Hot Keys While placing a platform, carriage, aisle, or static placeholder the type any of the following numbered keys to switch to the associated component with out leaving the drawing area: 1 Platform 2 Carriage 3 Mobile Aisle 4 Static Placeholder 5 Piggyback Carriages 6 Static Aisle General Hot Keys A Auto dimension (center to center) a selected elevation D Disconnect a selected shelf section E Explodes all shelf sections in a placeholder (static), platform or carriage. C Copies front cantilever shelving to back elevation of selected elevation. 1-10