Toolbar & tools - Experiware Guide

The toolbar is the strip above the viewport: the tools at the left, the options for whichever tool is active beside them, and at the right end the 2D/3D view switch and the Fab processes button. A tool decides what the left button does in the viewport; the camera stays on the other buttons.

The tool strip

The strip holds six icon buttons, five of them always present, with one of them active. Hovering a button names the tool and its key (Draw channel — D), and each key behaves exactly like a click of its button.

The tool strip with Draw channel active, and the options row beside it reading Width 100 µm

A single click picks a tool for one use: it returns to Select as soon as one action completes. A gesture you cancel keeps the tool active. Double-click a button to latch it — a push-pin appears beside it and it stays active after each use, until you press Esc or pick another tool.

The pointer is a crosshair under every tool but Select, where it stays an arrow.

While you have a component from Libraries open, you can still pick a tool and still click to select, but no tool creates or moves anything and no context menu opens — another file’s component is read-only.

Select — S

Select is the tool you return to: click to select, drag to move, right-click for the context menu. It is the only tool with a menu. See Viewport & navigation.

Draw channel — D

Draws one channel between two terminals — a point, or a pin of a component you placed. The gesture has two forms, and both resolve each end the same four ways, in order:

a pin or a point — the channel connects to it;
another channel’s body — that channel is split at the click, and a new point between the halves becomes the junction;
a region’s wall — a wall-bound point is created on that edge and the channel breaks through there;
empty space — a new point is created there and connected.

Drag from the start and release on the end for a straight run. Or press and release without moving to anchor the start, then click each bend in turn: a click on a target finishes there, and a double-click or Enter finishes at the last bend you placed.

Once the start is anchored, Backspace retracts the last bend. Esc abandons the gesture in either form. Releasing back onto the start, or anywhere on the region it starts from, cancels — there is no channel from a terminal to itself. While you are still dragging, a right-click drops a bend without ending the gesture.

The channel and everything the gesture created are one undo step.

Add point — P

Each click places a point at the cursor on the active layer, snapped to the grid when snapping is on. Keep the button down and drag to position it before you release; the placement and the nudge are one undo step.

Add component — C

Places an instance of the component picked in the options row, with the same press-and-drag behavior as Add point. With nothing picked the picker reads (pick) and a press places nothing.

Draw region — R

Drag from empty space to sweep out an axis-aligned rectangle, holding Shift for a square. Press and release without moving — or press anywhere that snaps to an existing wall — to start a polygon: each click places a vertex, and the ring closes when you click the first vertex, double-click, or press Enter.

Backspace retracts the last vertex — the first one is the corner you pressed on and stays. Esc abandons the gesture.

Where you press decides what you draw: empty space a new region, inside a pocket a hole, inside a hole a pocket. Every vertex you place snaps — to a nearby vertex, else onto a nearby edge, else to the grid while snapping is on — and one placed on an existing wall welds to it. The chip at the cursor names what the release will make — weld to, carve, split into — or why it will not; see Regions & compartments for what each one produces. The preview outlines the ring the release would make, drawing vertices borrowed from a welded wall more faintly than the ones you placed.

Clicking a wall more than once decides how much of that wall your shape takes:

Click a wall twice and the run of wall between the two clicks joins your shape. A corridor off a chamber takes four clicks, two of them on the wall.
A shape closes itself when its last wall click can reach the first one along the wall.
Starting off the wall turns that self-closing off, which is what a shape meeting one wall in two separate places needs.
To leave out the wall between two clicks, put a vertex off the wall between them. The chip asks for a vertex off the wall in two cases: where two runs of wall would both fit (can’t tell which side), and where no edge can be routed along it (no way to route that edge along the wall).

A refused release commits nothing. The rectangle is dropped; a polygon stays open with its vertices intact, so one Backspace puts you back where you were.

Insert vertex — I

The button appears, and the key works, only while a channel or a region is selected. Clicking inserts a vertex on the nearest segment of that shape, landing exactly on it — so nothing changes shape until you move it. Drag in the same press to position it straight away.

The options row

The options row sits beside the tools and appears only for a tool that takes input. Select, Add point, Draw region and Insert vertex show nothing there.

Draw channel shows Width in µm. Drag the field to scrub it or type a value and press Enter; it will not go below 1 µm. It is the width given to each point the gesture creates, and channel ends inherit from their points, so it is the width the run comes out at. See Channels & points for how an end inherits. Like the grid pitch it is a preference and not part of the design (Settings).

Add component shows the Component picker: your own components first, then each library under a dim heading you cannot pick. The component you have open is never listed — it cannot contain itself.

The view switch

The 2D / 3D pair sits right of the tools, with the view you are in shown pressed. It is the same switch as the Tab key and the View menu. See Viewport & navigation.

The Fab processes button

The button at the right end of the toolbar opens the Fab processes window, the same window Design → Fab processes… opens. Which process a stack is built with is shown in the Stack window.

Keyboard shortcuts

Experiware Guide