General Functions

This button pops up a list of available projects. Choose one to add out of a collection of predefined projects, i.e. to add its classes, methods, interactives in the opt-menu and initial entries for the scene-tree. The existing projects are described in chapter Projects 8.

This button pops up a list of added projects. Choose one to remove its user-interface part and its methods. The other things like classes cannot be removed savely. Delete one of the previously added projects. This will free your options menu of no longer used buttons and rulers.

Some export formats. This button opens a layer with buttons for every available output-format. It will be visible in every menu. Normally you will press PostScript to save the current contents of the graphics window as a postscript file -- a window with various options will appear, press to start (see section 4.3.11.1 for a detailed description of the PostScript config layer).

There are also platform-specific output-options for post-processing tools like renderers and ray-tracing-programs. Some drivers need machine licences.

Read a graphic-STate file *.st into the graphicdevice (see below). Unfortunately most of the rulers and sliders will control the relative position (because tha absolute values cannot be determined), so they will be set to middle position.

Write the current graphic-STate as a file *.st. It consists of the current state of the light, surf, and trans menu (the camera itself will be saved too, but the will not show, that the camera is active. If the default coordinate system has been configured, it will be saved and restored either. If you create a new file you should add the extension .st to the filename.

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Select a grape file *.gr and read or write objects in the new GRAPE XDR archiving format (which is machine-independent, is able to handle references and can easily be extended for new classes, see 5.7). Data files in the old format can still be read.

Send a method to the current object by typing the method's ASCII name or choosing from a list. The list contains all methods which make sense to be sent to the current object. Many methods (without arguments) are designed as user-sendable methods but are not worthy enough to have an own button. (For programmers: these are the methods with the suffix ``-send''.) You can walk through the hierarchy of all superclasses since their methods might also be useful.

Replace the standard display method "display", so that any change of control will cause the sending of the new method to the current object. As above you can walk through the class hierarchy. Some display methods have own interactives, which will be added to the option menus. These interactives will automatically be removed, if the specific display method is no longer in use. As mentioned above, you need to understand the GRAPE displaying concept (refer 4.3.5) to understand this selection. (For programmers: all methods with the suffix ``-disp'' are listed.)

Open a persisting layer with several switches.

Toggle between grid style and patch style. With grid style active, no filled polygons are drawn, but only their outlines. This speeds up the display process very much and is therefore recommended when working with objects that contain many polygons. In patch style, filled polygons are drawn; around lines (Triang1d's) a pipe is drawn, and points are displayed as spheres. If you want the lighting to take effect, you need to select patch style.

A Checkbox: suppress the graphic output to save time.

Use this Checkbox to switch the GraphicDevice between single-buffer mode and double-buffer-mode. If supported, double-buffer-mode suppresses flickering but sometimes has less colors.

toggle depth-cueing. With depth-cueing enabled, lines drawn in grid style seem like ``vanishing in the depth'', because the parts further away are drawn with darker colour. Not every machine is capable of depth-cueing, however. If GRAPE seems to have problems drawing lines, try to switch depth-cueing off. In general, if depth-cueing and light-model (i.e. patch mode) are both active the results will be somewhat unpredictable.

Draw the graphic window contents once, useful if you have switched off and want to see the current state.

full screen graphics: the graphics window is enlarged to full screen size. To leave this mode, just press the middle mouse button. Full screen viewing is most useful for making photographs of your geometry.

close the layer.