I love it when I'm sitting in a meeting with my colleagues or with a group of customers and someone brings up something about our software that they find annoying and another person says "Wait, why are you doing it that way? Why don't you just...". Immediately my mind says "blog time!"
One such sequence of events happened recently around the concept of "drag and drop." For those of us who have been around for a while, the idea of dragging objects, particularly text or something non-drawing related, just never springs to mind. I'll complain all day about having to re-type something or execute a long series of mouse clicks before I even try to just grab it and drag it where I want it to go.
So let's play a little game. Where are all the places in ADE L/XL/GXL and ViVA that you can perform some useful function by dragging something? I'm sure I'll miss a few, so feel free to leave additional discoveries in the comments.
In general
- Drag the toolbars to rearrange, resize or move them to other edges of the window
ADE L
- Drag the rows in the different subwindows to reorder them (Design Variables, Outputs, Analyses)
ADE XL
- Drag the rows in the Output Setup panel up and down to reorder them (within the same test)
- Drag the columns in the Output Setup panel to rearrange them (sadly it isn't saved, but it can be very handy while you're setting things up)
- Drag an output expression over to a Global Variable to have that variable value be taken from the result of one test and used as input to a different test (also referred to as combinatorial variable expressions)
- In the Detail-Transpose results view, drag columns (inputs or outputs) around for easier comparison of measured values. RMB on the columns in this view to hide them.
Calculator
- Drag an output expression from the Outputs Setup panel in ADE XL into the calculator buffer to create combinatorial output expressions using results from multiple tests
- Drag an expression from the Stack to the Buffer
- Drag an expression from the Expression Editor to the Buffer. Don't know about the Expression Editor? Time to learn!
- Drag one or more expressions from the Stack to the Expression Editor.
- Drag one or more expressions from the Stack, Buffer or Expression Editor and--wait for it--drop it into any text area outside of Virtuoso. Text editor, command line or it will even create a text file on your desktop.
- Drag an expression from the Stack, Buffer or Expression Editor into any text field in a calculator function form. (This is the one that inspired the "aha" moment I mentioned in the first paragraph.)
- Bonus Tip: Double-click on any Stack item to move it into the Buffer and push the contents of the Buffer onto the Stack
ViVA Graph
- Drag traces from one subwindow to another. (Hold Ctrl while dragging to copy instead of move)
- Drag traces from one strip to another (Hold Ctrl to copy)
- Drag a whole strip up or down to reorder
- Drag traces from the graph to the Subwindows Assistant (Window->Assistants->Subwindows if you haven't seen this). Here you can drop them in an empty area to create a new subwindow or into one of the existing subwindow thumbnails to put them there
- Drag signals from the Results Browser onto the graph or the Subwindows Assistant
- Drag a signal from the Results Browser into the Calculator Buffer
- Pretty much anything having to do with markers (point/A/B/delta, vertical or horizontal markers and their intercept bubbles) can be moved and rearranged by dragging
So there you have it. What have I missed? As always, your feedback is welcome.
Stacy Whiteman