The GC-Prevue Graphical Viewer

The main work environment in GC-Prevue is the Graphical Viewer, shown below in a typical configuration:

As shown in Figure 1, the Graphical Viewer contains a number of elements, each of which can be resized, moved around the Viewer screen or hidden. All elements except the board image are toggled on and off using the ‘View Toolbars’ menu:

The elements can be docked and expanded , shrunk or hidden using the usual corner arrow and cross buttons, but the ‘View Toolbars’ menu is the only way of reactivating them, and this has to be done one-by-one.

Typical locations for the top five elements on the drop-down menu of Figure 2 are indicated in Figure 1; the bottom six items in Figure 2 are toolbar sections, all of which can be customised.

Toolbars The toolbars are the standard Windows type and allow single-click access to the more common tasks. There are six toolbars, shown below with their default contents:

File

Layers

Select Points/Line

Units (drop-down mm; inches; mils)

Prepare Data

Viewing

There is also a filter to select specific object attributes.

Navigation View

Navigation View is a sizeable rectangular screen that depicts the board data in relationship to the Graphical Viewer. Navigation View tracks the position of the board graphically and also gives you another way to move the board data about on-screen.

Position the cursor over the rectangle that represents the Graphical Viewer and click and drag it to move around the board data. You can also click within Navigation View to jump from point to point.

Right-click within Navigation View to activate a drop-down menu of the following zoom options:

• Zoom Extents
• Zoom Previous
• Zoom In
• Zoom Out
• Cancel
• Jump to Crosshair

Coordinates Summary

The Coordinates Summary tracks the position of the cursor by X, Y coordinates relative to user-set, absolute and relative positions on the board. It also indicates the number of pads, drills, routs and traces for all selected data.

GC Explorer

GC Explorer presents the board image and allows you to display or hide the board layers and to configure and edit data files quickly. You can move layers from one category within the ‘tree structure’ to another by clicking and dragging, and move unassigned data layers into physical layers in the same way.

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