Tip of the month! February: Ribbons

With the new year and the imminent release of version 9 of Palette CAD, we have decided to go back to the basics and provide a little more insight into the structure of our software. This month we will look into Ribbons. Ribbons (menus) are a fast and intuitive option for working with Palette CAD.

Properties

• Ribbons show the Palette CAD commands clearly
• Ribbons are displayed permanently
• Screen-tips, or explanatory texts, appear when the mouse is moved over a command
• The graphic arrangement of the commands makes orientation easier and enhances learning
• The ribbons are also simply referred to as menus

 

The menus

• Design: Basic operations which are used frequently during designing are found here
• Most of these operations can also be executed quickly via the context menu, the right mouse button, or via shortcuts
• Insert: Here, architectural elements, base bodies and drawing elements can be loaded, and objects from other formats can be imported
• The catalogues featuring objects and materials can be opened in the Design menu
• Editing: The editing functions for objects can be found here
• Draw: This menu is only available when Palette CAD 2D is active, and it contains the tools for drawing using 2D elements
• Lay: This menu is only available when Tiling Technology is active, and it contains special tools for tile laying
• Extras: This contains important commands such as Save Object and Bill of Materials
• View: In addition to settings for the display mode windows, this area also contains the settings for rendering (the photo realistic and artistic display modes), and for switching between several open projects
• Exposé: This is an area for results in which images from the scene can be assembled on pages for a customer presentation

 

Quick access to settings

• Some menu items contain a quick access feature for configuration options
• The settings can be accessed via the slightly hidden small arrow located below the buttons
• There are configuration options in the menu for catalogues, editing, tools, cameras, Exposé and for the snap functions

Hiding ribbons

• The ribbons can be hidden to create more space for the scene
• When the ribbons are hidden, only the titles of the menus are displayed
• The menus can be displayed and hidden again simply by double-clicking on them
• As an alternative, you can click on the ribbon with the right mouse button and a context menu will appear
• “Minimize ribbon” hides the ribbon 
• Hiding the ribbons is not recommended, however, because when snapping, not all of the snap options are displayed and the display jumps 

Quick access

• The bar for quick access is located above the menus
• Any commands that you wish to have constantly available can be added to this bar  

Transferring a command to the quick access area directly from the menus

• Select a button in the ribbon
• Open the context menu of the right mouse button
• Click on: Add to quick access toolbar
• Now this command is present in the quick access bar

 

Shortcuts for ribbons

• There are very convenient, special shortcuts for switching between menus and for quickly accessing commands
• These shortcuts are displayed as soon as the Alt key is pressed
• When a shortcut is pressed, the shortcuts for the commands in the ribbon it belongs to are displayed immediately
• This means that most of the commands in the ribbons can be executed with Alt and two shortcut keystrokes
• The commands in the quick access bar are given numbers as shortcuts  

That's ribbons all cleared up and next month we will look at some of the new updates and features in Palette CAD 9.

Greeting from Stuttgart,

Your Palette CAD Blog Team