Manual · Chapter 2

The interface

What each part of the window is for. If you would rather learn by doing, start with your first analysis and come back when a control puzzles you.

The window

The two side panels can be hidden with View ▸ Object Browser and View ▸ Properties Panel.

The ribbon

The table lists the groups in each tab and the buttons a first-time user needs. The rest are in the workflow chapters.

▶ SOLVE is the front door: it looks at the scene, asks which analyses apply, and runs the selected ones in the right order. The individual solvers run one analysis with its own detail dialog.

The menu bar

The project tree

Two sections carry most of a project: Signals and Scene parts. Supports, loads, sensors, selections, bonds and mode sets appear under the part they belong to, so a part shows its whole setup without being opened.

• Rows carry their buttons inline: an eye that reads Hide or Show, and a delete button whose tooltip names what will go (Remove support, Remove load, Remove loudspeaker).
• F2 or a double-click renames a row in place.
• Drag a signal or a part onto a folder to move it there; Add folder on a section header makes one. Folders are organisation only.
• The + on the Signals header is Create signal (hammer, step, sweep…): how a project with no measurement file gets its first excitation.
• There is no right-click menu. Everything a row can do is on the row or in the properties panel.

The properties panel

Select an object and this panel becomes its editor: a material with its E, ν, ρ and ζ; a mode set with its frequency table; a signal with its channels, charts and export buttons.

With nothing selected it shows a checklist of the two journeys through the product, each step marked done, next or later. Measurement Analysis runs Import a signal and select it → Multi-channel measurement (excitation + response) → Compute FRF + coherence → Select poles on the stabilisation chart. Simulation runs Import or create geometry → Volume (tet) mesh: for FEM → Solve FEM modes (for the flexible run), with Place a transducer (for the rigid run) as an alternative route, not a prerequisite. Clicking the next step explains what is blocking it.

The 3D view

The world is Z-up, the mechanical CAD convention SolidWorks, Inventor, NX and gmsh all author in. Imported models are never rotated to suit the viewer.

The viewport toolbar repeats the seven camera presets (isometric, top, bottom, front, back, right and left), then a fit button, a section tool and a ? chip that toggles a Camera cheat-sheet. The section tool opens a Clip control: an axis (X, Y or Z), a slider for the plane, and a flip. It cuts a closed body open and changes nothing about the model.

When a run has produced fields to draw, a Layers menu appears with a Structure section (which field is painted on the part) and a Flow section (air particles, slices, streamlines, vortices, volumetric smoke). Layers with no data do not appear.

Charts and tabs

Chart types depend on the workflow: spectra and FRFs for measurements, mode tables and stress fields for FEM, echograms and directivity for acoustics. Each is described in its own chapter. Three behaviours are common:

• Tabs close with the ✕ on the tab.
• A tab can be pinned: Pin this tab: the next run opens a new one. Unpinned, a repeat run replaces the chart in place, so pin a tab you want to compare against.
• Split View (3D + chart) puts a chart and the 3D scene side by side, with a draggable divider. It is the only way to watch a mode animate and read its number at once.

The status bar

Left to right: the project name, a ● while there are unsaved changes, and the save state in words: unsaved changes · autosaved, saved with a time, or not yet written to a file. The working file is autosaved on the desktop build. Then the current selection, the grid spacing, and a readout that never changes: internal units: SI. Dialogs may ask for millimetres, but everything is stored and computed in SI.

Notifications

Messages arrive as toasts in the corner. Information and success toasts dismiss themselves after a few seconds, and hovering pauses the clock. Errors and blocked-action guidance are sticky. A guidance toast carries the reason, what is missing, and often a button that fixes it in one click.

At most four toasts are on screen at once, and the oldest is evicted silently. The bell at the right end of the status bar keeps the session's history with timestamps, and raises an unread count for errors that arrive while the panel is closed.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcuts are ignored while you are typing in a field and while a dialog is open. F2 works but is not listed in Help ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts; the table above is the complete set.

Next: your first analysis. A model, a mode and a number, in about fifteen minutes.