DesignBots Menu and Interface Functions Home
DesignBots Overview
Tutorial, Basic XYTable, Architecture.
File Menu
The file menu consists of a New, Open, Save, and Save As command.  These allow you to delete, save, and recover your bot design in the usual fashion.

Design Menu
The Design menu contains functions related to the design portion of your robotics project. The 'Create Part Room' and 'Delete Part Room' commands create and delete part rooms, as one might expect. If you look closely at the screenshots of DesignBots, you will notice a form called 'Parts Bar'. Each picture in the 'Parts Bar' corresponds to one part room. A part room can contain a single simple part, a part containing subparts, a complex robotic device composed of many parts and subparts, or a collection of robotic devices. You can move a part room left or right in the 'Parts Bar' with the 'Move Parts Room Left' and 'Move Parts Room Right' functions. The 'Edit Parts Room' function allows you to set values related to the contents and viewing of a parts room. The 'Move SubPart Up' and 'Move SubPart Down' functions allow you to set the position of the subparts displayed on the 'Edit Part Room' form.

Operate Menu
The Operate menu contains functions related to the operation of your robotic devices. Currently the application is focused upon design so there is only a manual motors control that allows you to test your motor configurations and preview the results in 3d on screen. The example application is designed to provide a starting point for the real world control portion of your robotic project.

Help Menu
Brings you here.

Spinners
The application's interface comes with 'spinners' for all of the main numeric inputs.  These allow the user to 'animate' the robot with the mouse.  To use a spinner, just double click on the number you want to 'spin', and the spinner form will pop up.

Edit Part Room Form
The Edit Part Room Form allows you to edit the contents of the part room selected with the 'Parts Bar'. At the top of the form is a tree overviewing the contents of the parts room. Boot up the DesignBot.exe application, load one of the example designs, then start selecting parts rooms with the 'Parts Bar' form. Note how the the 'Edit Part Room' form tracks your selection. Click on various parts of the tree at the top of the 'Edit Part Room' form and note how you can select subparts within the rooms that have them. Note how the parameter entry values at the bottom of the 'Edit Part Room' form track the part or subpart you have selected.
Changing the parameter values and clicking apply generally results in an on screen change so go ahead and experiment with the example files to get a feel for things.
Note that there is one 'main' part per room, and an optional number of subparts which are references to other parts rooms.
The following parameters can be changed.

Name-The name you have given the part or subpart.
Description-Space provided for you to describe the part or contents of the part room.
Camera-Set the position of the camera and the point at which it is aimed.
Shape Name-Selects a shape to represent this part.
Shape Color-Set the color that the shape will be rendered in using Red,Green,Blue values between 0 and 100.
Shape Size-Sets the size of the shape used to represent your part.
Part Position-Sets the position and orientation of a part or subpart in relation to it's parent. The spinner form works great for experimenting with these values, just double click on a number and start animating.
Motor-Set the location of the motor, type of motor(linear, rotational, or none), axis of rotation or linear motion, and actuation position.