Dialogs

Dockable dialogs

The page navigator, the navigators for devices and message management are "dockable" dialogs. This means that these dialogs can be positioned anywhere inside or outside the EPLAN main window, as with menus and toolbars.

Within the main window, you can position dockable dialogs at the top, left, bottom or right of the window borders, and also dock them to other dockable elements.

All the navigators, the graphical preview, opened project pages, forms, etc. can also be docked as a tab. Multiple windows arranged as tabs on top of each other form an optical unit - a so-called Tab group.

Graphical support for docking

When moving undocked windows (navigators, graphical preview, pages), multiple docking elements are displayed. You can use these user interface elements to specify the docking position of such a window:

Docking element	Meaning
	Docking laterally to a tab group or as a tab of a tab group.
	Docking to the left-hand area of a tab group or of the EPLAN main window.
	Docking to the right area of a tab group or of the EPLAN main window.
	Docking to the top area of a tab group or of the EPLAN main window.
	Docking to the bottom area of a tab group or of the EPLAN main window.

If you move a window onto a docking element in the case of moving, the pre-selected position is highlighted in color (blue).

Message and notification windows

These dialogs inform you about particular settings or possible errors, or require you to answer a confirmation (security) question. The window size of these dialogs cannot be changed.

Navigators

The so-called "navigators" offer you a special view of the project data. Navigators display data for a certain object in one or more open projects. The device navigator, for example, provides an overview of all devices while the terminal strip navigator shows you all terminal strips and terminals in open projects.

Tree and list views

Each navigator has two tabs for displaying data, Tree and List. The tree view displays objects in a hierarchical structure and in the list view data is shown in alphanumeric order.

You can use filters to define the data to be displayed in both types of view.

Memory function

Navigators and many settings dialogs have a "memory", i.e. when they are subsequently called up, as far as it is possible they display the same information in the same manner as the last time they were called up. A navigator dialog that was closed with the List tab in the foreground, will again show this tab when it is re-opened and will jump to the line that was selected in the last editing operation. If this is not possible (because the list sequence has changed, or the last selected object has been deleted or renamed) then it jumps to the first line in the list. The same is naturally true for the tree view: When re-opened, this automatically displays the most recently opened branch in the hierarchy, as far as this is possible.

Notes:

The Symbol selection, Parts management and Parts selection dialogs have an analog structure with tree and list views like the navigators and also have a memory function.
Although the page navigator has both list and tree structures, the "list" in this case is a table. This means that page overview lists are controlled in a different manner to the "normal" navigator lists.
Dialogs for settings which originate from a scheme that can be selected in the dialog and which are changed for only one individual case have no memory; instead, the settings are adopted from the scheme whenever the dialog is called up.

Write-protected dialogs

These dialogs contain data that can only be edited by users having specific access rights. Other users without these rights can only read the data and may not enter data.

A dialog may be completely write-protected or individual dialog elements, e.g. a check box, may be write-protected because the data source is write-protected. In such cases, the system refuses to accept the data entry and a message notifies you of the missing access rights.

Dialog splitter

Under Windows, the so-called "dialog splitter" allows you to change the separation within a dialog both vertically and horizontally. This is especially useful when the dialog contains a selection and a data area, for instance the Project management dialog.

You can recognize the splitter by a change in the shape of the mouse pointer:

Cursor	Meaning
	Horizontal dialog splitting.
	Vertical dialog splitting.

Notes:

The position of the splitter is internally stored via the "dialog memory".
When the size of the dialog changes, the relative position of the splitter changes to suit.
The dialog splitter has limited available space, i.e. for vertical dialog element arrangements there is an internal limit for the left and right edges, and for horizontal arrangements there is an internal limit for the upper and lower edges.

Tip:

You should first define the dialog size for the splitter before moving the splitter.