This chapter covers the items found in the MeshTV Main window. It does not cover the items in the Main menu bar at the top of the window, nor does it cover the Plots pulldown, Plot attributes pulldown, Operators pulldown, Operator attributes pulldown, or Variables pulldown. All the items which aren't covered here are covered in other chapters.
Most operations in MeshTV are accessed via the Main window. Files can be opened, plots can be drawn and animated, posted windows can be manipulated, and operations like reflect and slice can be performed on plots.
While plots and operators are accessed from this window, they are detailed enough to require their own chapters. See Plots, Plot Attributes, and Variables for a discussion of plot types and their attributes, and Operators and Operator Attributes for a discussion of operators and their attributes.
At times you will need to open windows to perform other operations. Those windows and operations are described in other chapters. Operations which deal with files and saving and printing images (things under the File pulldown menu) can be found in File Menu . Controls Menu deals with operations which are problem-wide rather than plot-specific (and which are found under the Controls pulldown menu). The functionality found under the Extra pulldown menu can be found in Extra Menu . To find help on operations involving visualization windows, or items under the Window pulldown menu, look in Window Menu . To find out more about using the on-line help system, or to read the copyright, release notes, or the list of credits, check out Help Menu .
Main window
shows the standard MeshTV
Main
window. The window might look slightly different when you pull it up if you have saved your own preferences. The files listed in the
Selected files
list will probably be different, too.
There are several sections to this window. These are the Main menu bar, the Selected files area, the Animation area, the Active plots area, and the Notepad area.
This area provides pulldown menus which allow you to access many MeshTV capabilities.
This area allows you to open files which have already been selected.
This area provides controls to animate plots from open files.
This area allows specification of the active visualization window, provides the ability to have a new plot replace the existing plots, and directs MeshTV to automatically update plots when their attributes change. The area lists the current plots and allows deleting and drawing of plots. It also allows you to choose which plots to draw and to specify attributes for those plots. It provides a mechanism for specifying operations on plots and for setting attributes for those operations. You can also indicate if you want to apply operators to all plots or just to the selected plots.
If you plan to use a window repeatedly, but you'd prefer not to have it constantly open and cluttering up your screen, you might want to post it to this area, if you can. Windows which can be posted will have a Post button, and once you press that button, the window will appear in this area. On lower-resolution screens, this area can be too small to fully view the posted windows.