Saving Views in SmartCAM: Part One - Customizing Toolbars

 

Saving Views with

Part 1: Customizing Toolbars

Overview

This month’s blog is the first in a series of posts that will cover customizing the SmartCAM Toolbars. This series will cover creating your own custom icons, and setting up views with icons in the toolbars for those custom views. With custom buttons/icons and custom views, you can switch quickly and easily to ensure the tools you need are at your fingertips when you need them. While you may find some of the discussions rudimentary, we wanted to ensure we covered all the necessary steps so all users are aware of each phase of the process so everyone can be successful in creating a user interface (UI) that helps increase your productivity.

This month, we’ll discuss customizing Toolbars. By default, all SmartCAM products install with commonly used tools in different toolbars. For this post, we aren’t going to go into too much detail about all the different default toolbars, the tools that are visible in them, or all the ways you can customize them. If you are new to SmartCAM and want to learn more about the interface itself, check out our SmartCAM Learning on the SmartCAM Workspace.

One thing to note is that every tool available for use in a Toolbar is also available via a menu item. For example, the same functions are available by clicking the Create Geometry button  in the Modeling Toolbar as those that can be accessed by going to the Create → Geometry list in the File options at the top of the screen.

In this month’s blog, we want to specifically discuss some of the options you have for customizing tool bars. This discussion includes all SmartCAM Milling and Turning applications as well as Wire EDM and Fabrication.

This month's post will cover:

•  Default Toolbars
•  Toolbar Control
•  Adding and Removing Items in a Toolbar
  

 

Default Toolbars

Here are the default Toolbars in a common configuration:

1. Main Toolbar
2. Display Toolbar
3. Toolpath Toolbar
4. Modeling Toolbar
5. Group Select Toolbar

3 and 4 will be specific to the product you are using

What is important to know about all the different Toolbars is that, regardless of the toolbar, you can customize how you view it. Some examples being that you can change where it is on the screen and what tools you have listed based on how you use your SmartCAM product.

Toolbar Control

When you Right click on a Toolbar, you have some options. We will discuss the options at the top a bit more later. For now, let’s discuss some of the options in that bottom section:

Position: This setting determines where the Toolbar itself resides.

Suppose you are working in a space where you have dual monitors, and have lots of real estate on your screens to work with, and you have specific toolbars you work with regularly. Let’s get a Toolbar off the main screen and over on your second monitor:

On the Toolbar you want to move to another screen, Right click the Toolbar and select Position – Float.

Float allows you to move the Toolbar wherever you want it by dragging it by the top of the bar. 

The other options in the Position tool set will keep the Toolbar in the application window in the Position selected.

Size: This mostly relates to the size of the icon in the Toolbar and more specifically helps with resolution. If you find the icons look odd on your screen, you can try different sizes.

Text: You can change where the text displays in relationship to the icons. Also, as you become more familiar with your SmartCAM product, you may wish to turn off the text in the Toolbar:

vs

See how much screen space that frees up?

Alignment: This aligns the icons and/or text within the Toolbar itself.

Adding and Removing items in a Toolbar

Let’s say you have some tools on the Toolpath Toolbar that you use more than others and you want to add those tools, and remove some that are really just getting in your way. Here’s how to add and remove items in a Toolbar: 

1.  On the desired Toolbar, Right click and select Edit Toolbar.  

On the left you will see the list of “Active Buttons.” These are the tools/icons that are currently available.
On the right is the list of “Predefined Buttons”/tools that you can add to that Toolbar. 

2.  To add an item, select it from the list on the right and click the lesser than arrow  in the middle of the window.

You will note that in the list of “Active Buttons”, there are Separators. Separators are simply visual dividers that can help with grouping:

3.  You can add Separators by clicking on the Add Separator button.
4.  Place your new tool and/separator in the desired location by using the Move Up and Move Down buttons below the “Active Buttons” window.
5.  To remove an item, select it from the list on the left and click the greater than arrow  in the middle of the window.
6.  Once you have added and removed the desired tools and placed everything as needed, click Accept. 

So that’s all for this month’s post. We hope you learned something new or at least got a bit of a refresher that got you ready for our series on adding icons and views.

Ready to learn more? Next month we’ll cover how to create your own Toolbar icon and description. We’ll also show you how add that to a Toolbar.