Assembly Window

The Assembly Window adds the ability to organise surfaces into groups in Maxsurf and a quick access to surface related commands and settings such as visibility, locking and trimming. Grouping surfaces allows changing the settings for several surfaces with one right click action.

The assembly window in Maxsurf can be in different states:

· Floating

· Docked

· Pinned – Auto Hide

· Hidden

Floating

Docked

Pinned -
Auto Hide

Opening the Assembly Window

The Assembly window may be brought to the front by selecting View | Assembly window, pressing F2, or using the button on the view toolbar.

The Assembly Window is a floating palette window that contains a tree view of the surface hierarchy.

Docking the Assembly Window

To dock a floating assembly window, simply left click on the top window border and drag it onto any of the stickers that appear.

Drag the Assembly Window onto the sticker to dock it.

When the Assembly Window is docked, this process can easily be reversed to switch back to a Floating Assembly window. Simply select the top border of the docked window and drag it to any location on the screen.

Tip: when the Assembly Window is docked, you can use the “Tile Horizontal” or “Tile Vertical” commands from the Windows menu to automatically fill the rest of the window with your favourite working windows.

Pinning or Auto Hiding the Assembly Window

You can change the Assembly window from Docked to Pinned or Auto Hide and visa versa by clicking on the Pin icon on the top right of the window.

When the Assembly Window is in the Auto Hide state, it will automatically hide itself to the outside of the screen if it is not being used. To show the dialog again, simply move your mouse cursor over the bar on the side of the screen (or click on it) and it will appear.

Editing Surfaces and Assemblies

The tree view has full support for inline editing, so names of assemblies and surfaces can be changed easily simply by slowly clicking twice on the name. Surfaces properties can also be edited by double clicking on the name, which then brings up the Surface Properties dialog box. You can also right-click on any item in the tree to modify it via context sensitive menus. Further, a surface’s properties may be edited by double clicking on the surface name in the Assembly window.

Drag and Drop

You can move a surface into an assembly by dragging and dropping the surface icon in the tree onto the assembly. You can move an assembly into another assembly in the same way.

You can repeat this process as required to create any arrangement of assemblies you may require.

Context Sensitive Menus

Right clicking on an item in the tree view brings up a menu with commands for that item.

For surfaces this context sensitive menu contains:

Add New Assembly	Adds a new assembly, with the same parent as the current surface.
Rename	Renames the currently selected surface
Lock/Unlock	Locks or unlocks the currently selected surface (if possible to do so)
Show/Hide	Shows or Hides the currently selected surface
Properties	Shows Surface Properties Dialog for the current surface

Assembly window – Context Sensitive Menu for Surfaces

For assemblies this context sensitive menu contains:

Add	Adds a new assembly, with the same parent as the current assembly
Delete	Deletes the currently selected assembly
Rename	Renames the currently selected assembly
Hide	Hides all surfaces that belong to the currently selected assembly, including any surfaces belonging to sub-assemblies of this assembly.
Show	As per Hide Assembly, but instead showing surfaces that belong to the currently selected assembly, including any surfaces belonging to sub-assemblies of this assembly.
Lock	As per Hide Assembly, but instead locking all surfaces that belong to the currently selected assembly, including any surfaces belonging to sub-assemblies of this assembly.
Unlock	As per Hide Assembly, but instead unlocking surfaces that belong to the currently selected assembly, including any surfaces belonging to sub-assemblies of this assembly.

Assembly window - Context Sensitive Menu for Assemblies

Assembly window Icons

Icons are used next to each item to show its current state – i.e. unlocked/locked, visible/hidden, and also for assemblies, i.e. collapsed/expanded. Icons allow you to see at a glance what state a surface is in at any time. The tick icon indicates that the surface is visible; the padlock icon indicates that the surface is locked.