Yes, from what I can remember they've incorporated several ways to hide menus. If you bump the cursor against the side where the window pane is located, it unrolls from the side. (This is user configurable of course, as is everything else it seems)
The object selection has gotten more sophisticated and there is a live spreadsheet of all object which to them is an alternate view of the graphic represention of your board. The spreadsheet has some neat sorting and editing features and operates on the live database of your PCB. If you're curious about exactly what's happening while in the spreadsheet, it's a click away to see the selection (or whatever) on the PCB. One thing they did remove is the dual selection as we currently have. We now have the selection and focus, which is pretty handy, but it also burns people once in a while because they forget to deselect all before doing some other selection operation. If you're used to pressing X-A before starting another selection, then it's not a problem. Now they have one selection without the addition of focus (like all other Windows programs), so when you selection something you need to be careful in the other sense. You could accidentally un-select everything if you forget to ctrl click to add selected object. I'd say it's "six of one, half-dozen of the other" sort of situation. They talked about maybe putting it back in, but I don't care that much about it. They did not add (sch) wire cleanup like Orcad has, but it does seem to be on their list of things to do. One really nice new feature is dimensioning in PCB. There are at least 6 new dimensioning tools, and they attach themselves to objects on the PCB, so if the object moves, the dimension adjusts. It's about time!!!! There is total control of them too, the dimension text can be rotated, moved, or whatever just by dragging it with the mouse. That's big time saver right there! Here are some other features that stayed in my mine long enough to write this email: Ability to graphically cut rooms on the PCB. New (and easier) ways to define split planes. Way better BOM generator. Multi-channel handling: Define one sch page of a repeated circuit and tell it how many duplicates there are. You have nice control over annotating it without flattening it. You then go to PCB and get a room for each instantiation. Lay out one of them and tell IT to layout the others! Man does this ROCK!!! I think those of us that are beta people will really get a feel for what's new and if it's worth it. I think so based on the time spent at the show. BTW, the app only crashed once and we were poking around one of the very newest features when that happened. I was impressed considering they haven't even starting beta testing yet. Now I've got to get back to work... Tony Karavidas Encore Electronics http://www.EncoreElectronics.com Designers of "The best MIDI to CV converter on the planet." -Keyboard Oct. 1997 > -----Original Message----- > From: Dwight [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 2:19 PM > To: 'Protel EDA Forum' > Subject: Re: [PEDA] PCB West > > > Fading toolbars sounds nice, altho' I usually leave them in the lower-left > corner where they aren't in my way very often. > > I have a toolbar button to toggle the "Design Manager" pane off & on -- I > think that's standard, but maybe I added it a long time ago. > Does DXP allow > some sort of "auto-hide" for it now? > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Tony Karavidas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 9:55 AM > <snip> > > When you have a floating menu in the area of > > the board that you're trying to route, the menu fades away while the > cursor > > is there and fades back when you pass through the area. It may not sound > > like much, but wait until you see it! I'm constantly shifting around > trying > > to get from behind floating tool bars and they've fixed that > for me. Also > > the big explorer area to the side of your work area can retract > horizontally > > when unused. > * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * To post a message: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * To leave this list visit: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/leave.html * * Contact the list manager: * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * * Forum Guidelines Rules: * http://www.techservinc.com/protelusers/forumrules.html * * Browse or Search previous postings: * http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
