Contents of View Options

View Options

This is a sub-menu allowing the user to determine the appearance of the model in the Graph Window. The components in the sub-menu are also available as buttons on the ``Graph Tool Bar.'' All of these are toggle type functions — if selected they will appear checked in the menu and depressed in the ``Graph Tool Bar.''

NOTE: Some of these functions can make the redrawing of models extremely slow and it is recommended that these options are removed if large models are to be rotated a number of times.

Show Nodes shows all the nodes (including segment endpoints) on the main sides of major elements.
When Show Discretisation is selected element sides are shown in blue, the primary lines in purple and the secondary lines in green. (The distinction between these lines was discussed in Section .)
When any of View From X, View From Y or View From Z is selected the co-ordinates of the current cursor position (mouse cursor position in the Graph Window) will be shown (in black) inside the ``Co-ordinate boxes'' on the Information Bar — provided no node is selected. The cursor is taken to be on the plane of the projection and one of the three co-ordinates will always be zero. This is important when viewing models using perspective where the projection on this plane is also dependent on the co-ordinate normal to the screen.
If any of the above three ``View From ...'' buttons is unselected the viewer goes back to its original viewing angle. However, if one of the position boxes (θ, φ or r viewpoint boxes) is clicked while any one of the ``View From...'' buttons is enabled, the viewpoint is set to the view angle associated with the enabled ``View From ...'' button. Also, the ``View From ...'' button is reset and the co-ordinate showing is switched off.