The new Insert center for Symbols, Devices and Macros

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The new Insert center for Symbols, Devices and Macros

The new Insert center allows you to insert different objects such as symbols, devices as well as window and symbol macros directly via a shared dialog onto project pages or into layout spaces. In addition the dialog provides various quick access possibilities which allow you to accelerate the design stage.

The dialog of the Insert center is located at the-right hand edge of the graphical editor or layout space and - as usual with the flyout dialogs - can be docked or undocked. A separate Insert center is available for each open page or layout space.

Benefit:

A consistent and improved workflow has been reached by combining the inserting of symbols, devices and macros into one dialog. This way the separate commands and selection dialogs are superfluous.

The possibility to access the objects last used and define favorites, accelerates your configuration work many times over, in particular if you have to insert the same symbols, devices or window macros / symbol macros time and again. On top of that, non-project-specific favorites are available. The time-consuming search in symbol libraries, in the part selection or in the macro directories of different projects is then not required anymore. Tags can be assigned to all objects. With a tag you can, for example, link different objects with a manufacturer name, a project or a randomly selected term. This means these objects can be called up together via the respective tag and can be used quickly for insertion.

Depending on whether a schematic page or a layout space is currently open, the Insert center for each situation offers the fitting objects for insertion.

Find

You can find all object types in the Insert center using the Find field. No differentiation is made during the search between upper-/lower-case letters. The search result is displayed - sorted by object types - below the breadcrumb trail in the form of drop-down folders. You can use drag & drop to insert the desired objects from the preview of the search result directly into the schematic or layout space.

You can use logic operators and placeholder signs for the search:

Characters	Usage
Blank	AND operation
\|	OR operation
-	NOT operation (negated search)
*	Any number of characters
?	Single character

If tags were defined for objects to be inserted, the corresponding objects can be determined in the search field by using the search term t:<Tag-Name> (for example t:Motor).

Using the keyboard it also possible to perform a targeted search for the object types Symbols, Devices and Window and symbol macros, whereby the flyout of the Insert center is shown and the cursor is placed immediately in the Find field. After the completed search the folder of the object type fitting the shortcut key is opened immediately and the found objects are displayed as tiles in the preview. The following shortcut keys are available for this type of search:

Key combination	Object type
[Ins]	Symbols
[Alt] + [Ins]	Devices
[M], [Ctrl] + [Ins]	Window macros / symbol macros

Breadcrumb trail

The breadcrumb trail indicates in which folder structure of the Insert center you are located. In this line different buttons are available in the breadcrumb trail to switch the currently set folder and to move to the desired objects:

Button	Meaning
	Opens a menu from where - depending on the currently selected folder - you can switch to a folder of the same, higher or lower hierarchy level.
	Makes it possible to return immediately to the standard view of the Insert center, which is also possible via the Home entry.
	Makes it possible to navigate one hierarchy level up in the folder structure.
	Makes it possible to select other folders or return to the standard view. Shows at the same time that the folder structure shown in the breadcrumb trail cannot be displayed fully anymore because of its length. To make the entire folder structure visible you can further extend the dialog of the Insert center.

Folders

In the start view of the Insert center the folders for the quick access ("Recent", "Favorites" and "Tags") and as well as for the object types ("Symbols", "Devices" and "Window macros / symbol macros") are shown.

Button	Meaning
Recent	This provides you with a preview of the most recently inserted objects.
Favorites	This folder provides you with a preview of all objects identified as favorites.
Tags	An object can be assigned to one or more randomly selected tags. With this folder you branch to the tags which you have defined for the desired objects.
Symbols	With this you branch to the symbol libraries stored in the currently open project including the contained symbols.
Devices	This moves you by default to the devices from the parts management.
Window macros / symbol macros	With this you branch to the window and symbol macros in the set macro directory.

Preview tiles

If you click a folder which contains objects, a preview of the objects in the form of tiles is shown. The contents of the tile depend on the selected object type. A symbol or macro graphic is always displayed for a symbol or a macro. For a device the preview depends on the information stored at the part, The following sequence applies in this context: If an image file is stored at the part, it is shown. If a macro is stored, the macro graphic is displayed. If a symbol is assigned to a function template, the symbol graphic is displayed. If neither an image file nor a macro or symbol graphic is available for the device, a camera symbol is displayed.

Within the preview tiles different icons are available which allow you to define favorites (), assign tags to objects () or select the variants of an object ().

Info area

The most important properties of the object are shown in the information area below the preview.

Operation

To insert, mark the objects shown in the preview and drag & drop them into the graphical editor or open layout space.

Alternatively, an object can also be inserted by using the keyboard. After you have selected an object in the preview by pressing the [Enter] key, it can be inserted into a project page or a layout space by using the arrow keys.

Apart from pure use of the mouse, the Insert center also allows numerous navigation possibilities via the keyboard.