The Application Layout

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The Application Layout

The Ribbon Menu is displayed at the top of DEX main window as shown below.

The aim of DEX Ribbon is to enhance usability by consolidating DEX's functions and commands in an easily recognizable place. You need not look through multiple levels of hierarchical menus, toolbars, or task panes before finding the right command.

The Ribbon consists of a pane that contains controls (such as buttons and icons) organized into a set of tabs, each one containing a grouping of relevant commands.

Some tabs, called contextual tabs, appear only after you select an object or a sheet. Contextual tabs expose functionality specific only to the object/sheet with focus.

Ribbon

File Button

Clicking this shows the file menu.

Ribbon Menu

This is the top menu which is similar to the ribbon menu you will see in Microsoft Office 2010 and later. It is a series of ribbon tabs which contain button groups. This is a modern substitute to the class drop down menu.

Ribbon Tab

A collection of ribbon button groups.

Ribbon Button Group

A collection of control buttons.

Quick Access Toolbar

At the top of DEX is the Quick Access toolbar which contains a grouping of ribbon control buttons that you can configure.

Viewport Tabs

This area contains viewports in tabbed control. Each tab shows you a different sheet.

Viewport

Viewports are views of sheets. Sheets can be schematic sheet, symbol sheets, footprint sheet, PCB sheets or text document sheets.

Panels

Around the side of the viewports you can arrange Panels which are collections of controls to do a specific task.

Docking Panels

These are panels that are docked to the side of DEX. Normally you will dock them to the left or the right of DEX main application window.

Floating Panels

These are panels that are free to move about the screen. You can even place then on different screens.

Auto-Hidden Panels

These are panels that automatically collapse and expand so you can see more of the viewports when you are working on them.

Status Bar

The status bar is always at the bottom of DEX window. It shows the status prompts and lets you zoom in and out.

The Color Bar

This is a bar at the bottom of DEX window that lets you set the fill and line color of selected objects.