Users' Guide

Focus version 4.1.1.0 beta

September 18, 2007

  1. Introduction
  2. Menus
  3. Toolbar
  4. A note about link objects
  5. Running an Application on a Transmittal
  6. Runtime Variables
  7. Bug Reports and Feedback


Introduction

The Focus application is useful for examining, editing, and correcting SEDRIS Transmittal Format (STF) files (also called SEDRIS transmittals). Focus can also run other SEDRIS-based applications, such as Depth, Syntax Checker and Rules Checker, as well as read their error reports. This release has been tested on Linux RH9 and Windows NT/2000/XP and is compatible with SEDRIS 4.1. The following image and text describes some of the important parts of the main Focus window. The numbers in red correspond to the numbered comments below.

  1. A transmittal's structure will be displayed in the left side of the View Pane. Objects that appear grey are ITR objects, objects that do not reside in the transmittal that was opened through the GUI.
  2. As objects in the transmittal are selected by clicking on them, their fields are displayed in the right side of the View Pane.
  3. The path to the transmittal in the viewer currently being viewed is displayed on the main window title bar.
  4. The Toolbar has buttons for editing and browsing transmittals. The Toolbar can be dragged to any side of the View Area or can be a floating window. Additionally, some of the Toolbar functionality is available via a right-click popup menu on the left side of the View Pane and also in the Edit Menu.
  5. The Bookmarks Pane.
  6. The Applications Pane.

Menus

File Menu

Open Transmittal

Open a transmittal using the File->Open Transmittal menu option. Shortcuts for opening recent transmittals are available at the bottom of the File menu under Recent Files. The number of shortcuts saved can be specified in the Options->Preferences->System pane.

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Open Transmittal Read Only

Open a transmittal using the File->Open Transmittal Read Only menu option. Same as Open Transmittal but when opened in read only mode, the transmittal cannot be edited. Shortcuts for opening recent transmittals are available at the bottom of the File menu under Recent Files. The number of shortcuts saved can be specified in the Options->Preferences->System pane.

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Recent Files

By hovering the mouse cursor over the Recent Files menu item a sub-menu will pop up and display a number of recently opened or created transmittal files. Clicking on one of these will re-open that transmittal, in the same mode (Read Only or Editable), in a new View pane. The number of recent transmittals saved can be specified in the Options->Preferences->System pane.


New Transmittal

When you create a new transmittal a default transmittal displayed. It contains only a <Transmittal Root>. This can be used as a workspace for building, cutting, and pasting objects to and from other transmittals.


Close

Use the Close menu item when you want to close all open Views of the currently selected Transmittal.


Save

Use this menu item to flush all recent edits on the current transmittal to the disk. This is very handy when you want to run an application such as depth or the checkers on the transmittal that you've been editting. In previous versions of this tool you would have been required to close the transmittal and Focus to save your changes before running an application.


Save As

Use this menu item to flush all recent edits on the current transmittal to the disk and change the name of the transmittal. Please note that you need to have at least 2.5 times the hard disk space as the size of the transmittal that you are saving to a different name.


Open Focus Error File

Two of the applications, Syntax Checker and Rules Checker, will output an Error file by default. This file can be displayed by clicking the Show Errors button on the Results window. The Errors will then be displayed in a separate window. Clicking on an Error's Object ID button will select that object in the View pane. Error files can be saved and viewed using this menu item.


Exit

This item will close all transmittals and then shutdown the Focus application.


Options Menu

Preferences

The following features are user configurable through this menu item:


System Preferences

The System preferences are the default parameters for display and editing. Users can configure the display font size, look-and-feel, and the object editing display format among others. Please see Edit under the Edit Menu for more information about the default Edit View option.

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Viewer Preferences

The Viewer preferences specifies how the transmittal is traversed and displayed in the View pane.

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Application Preferences

The Applications Preferences can be used to either add new applications to Focus or modify current applications.

To add an application, Click on the "New" button then specify an application label, a short description to be displayed with the About button, the path to the executable, and any command line arguments you want to add.

The currently available argument types are:

An example of an Enumeration argument can be seen below.

Focus automatically builds a run window for each application according to the options saved, as seen in the following example for running the Depth application:

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Edit Menu

The Edit menu and the object right click menu are almost the same. Many of the options presented on the Edit Menu are also on the Toolbar.


New

Please refer to the description of this menu item under the Toolbar.

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Copy / Paste Object / Paste Tree

Please refer to the description of this menu item under the Toolbar.

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Delete

Please refer to the description of this menu item under the Toolbar.

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Edit

Please refer to the description of this menu item under the Toolbar.

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Bookmark

Please refer to the description of this menu item under the Toolbar.

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Find

Please refer to the description of this menu item under the Toolbar.

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Add a relationship

Please refer to the description of this menu item under the Toolbar.

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Remove a relationship

Please refer to the description of this menu item under the Toolbar.

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Search Menu

OME Match

The first window that you'll see is the OME Match window.

Object Selection:
You can either select an object from the transmittal or you can select an XML object set file.
OME Selection:
In this section you'll need to select an OME file and also type in the OME name that you want to match from that file. You can use the File Editor button to view and edit the OME file and copy and paste the OME name to the OME name box.
Options:
In this section you'll need to select whether or not you want the OME to match on the tree of the selected object or only on the object(s).
The OME file editor window

The OME editor is a basic text editor. You can use the basic editing control keys such as Control-X (Cut), Control-C (copy), and Control-V (paste) keys. There is also an option on the editor's File Menu to "Use Template". This menu item replaces what's in the current window with a basic template for an OME file. Just replace the values that say "insert_something_here" and save it. Whenever you save, save as, or open a file, the name of that file is adjusted in the OME Match window's OME File field.

When you've filled in all this information then select the Match button.

The Matches Window

If there are any matches to your search then the matches window will appear. If the OME search takes more than a few seconds then a progress bar window will appear with the time elapsed. Also on this progress bar window is a button to stop the OME search. If you stop the OME search before it completes it will show you the matching objects that the OME search found up to the point that you stopped it. The matches window has the following sections:

Matching Objects section
The objects that were found during the OME search will be displayed here. Each object has an index number that indicates the order that the objects were found. Next to the index number is a checkbox. Initially, all objects are selected. The checkbox coincides with the object set creation button. The objects that are selected will be saved as part of your object set. The next item is the object's ID. And last is the View Object button. When clicked, the object will become focused in the transmittal's View Pane. For version 4.0.1.2 this function does not work for ITR objects that were found during the search.
The number of matching objects shown in this section is determined by the number selected in the Number To Show section. The scrollbar, if present, cycles through the Number To Show objects while the arrows to the right of the objects cycle through the entire set Number To Show objects at a time.
Number of Matches Label
The number of matches resides directly under the Matching Objects section and displays how many total matching objects were found.
Number To Show section
The number of matching objects shown in the Matching Objects section is determined by the number selected here. The scrollbar, if present, cycles through the Number To Show objects. Selecting a number here automatically resizes the set of objects in the Matching Objects section.
Jump To Index section
Type in a number, in the range of 1 to the total number of matching objects or 100,000 (whichever is less), into the text area and click on the Go To Indexed Object button and the object corresponding to it will be brought into view. It was decided that individual manipulation of objects in sets greater than 100,000 was just too unmanageable.
Button section
Object Set Creation Button
Create a new object set by selecting the Create Object Set From Selected Objects button. All the matching objects that are selected using the checkboxes will be saved into an XML object set or a plain text file. If you save an XML object set it can be used to narrow the results by running a new OME on the new XML object set.
Object Set Information Button
The Object Set Information currently consists of the originating transmittal, the original OME name, and the original OME file name.
STF Selection Button
Use this button to change the transmittal that the View Object button applies to. Simply select the transmittal that you want to use in the main Focus window and then select this button.

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Open OME Object Set

Opening an OME object set just requires you to select an XML object set file from the chooser. Once the file has been selected it brings up a window similar to the Matches Window.


Window Menu

Cascade

This option will rearrange the current windows into a cascade formation as seen below:

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Tile

This option will rearrange the current windows into a tile formation as seen below:

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Window Selection

This section of the menu shows all the windows currently in the Edit area. Select one to bring that window to the front if it's hidden and to expand the window if it's minimized.

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Help Menu

Users Guide

This document.

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Release Notes

The Release Notes document describes the specific related to each release of this application. For example it describes the basic capabilities of Focus, the platforms and libraries it's compatible with, and the changes made for this release and previous releases.

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About Focus

This is a short description of the Focus application, it's version number, and what SEDRIS library it's compatible with.

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Toolbar

The Toolbar has buttons for editing and browsing transmittals. The Toolbar can be dragged to any side of the view pane or can be a floating window. Additionally, some of the Toolbar functionality is available via a right-click popup menu on the left side of the View pane and also in the Edit Menu.


Aggregate/Component Object

Aggregate and Component Objects are tree navigation buttons for selecting the aggregate or component of the selected obejct in the tree hierarchy. For example if a <Geometry Model> is selected through the associated <Geometry Model Instance> then by clicking on the Aggregate button the aggregate of the <Geometry Model>, which is a <Model>, will be selected.

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Previous/Next Sibling

The Previous and Next Sibling buttons are tree navigation buttons for objects at the same level in the tree hierarchy under a single aggregate. For example if a <Table Property Description> has four direct component <Property Characteristic>s and the first one is selected, clicking on Next Sibling will move the selection to the next direct component <Property Characteristic>.

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Step Up/Down (in the view tree)

The Step Up/Down buttons are the simplest navigation buttons and just step up or down in the view tree..

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New

This item brings up an interface for creating a new object.

The newly created object will be pasted as a component of the currently selected node. The object's fields will be initially set to default values.

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Delete

Deletes the currently selected node, all relationships to / from it, and the tree below it.

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Edit

Edit allows an object's attributes to be edited. All object classes are supported. There are two views of of the editing window:

The List view lists all the field values in a scrollable pane.

The Tabular view displays one field at a time and the user can select which to display by using the field tabs.

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Copy / Paste Object / Paste Tree

To make a copy of an object or tree, first select the object and then select Copy in either the Edit Menu, the right click menu, or the Toolbar. Once Copy is applied to the currently selected node, you can then select a node under which the copied node is to be created as a component. If you want to just copy the object by itself then just select Paste Object. If you want to copy the object and it's entire tree then select Paste Tree.

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Add Relationship

This button allows you to add either a component or a one-way/two-way associate relationship. The currently selected node will automatically be added to the aggregate or from object area when you click on this button. It can be changed at will by selecting another node in the View Pane and then clicking on the button below the object ID area for the aggregate/from object marked 'Get currently selected node for this object'. To select a component/to object follow the same procedure for changing the aggregate/from object and then click on the button below the object ID area for the component/to object marked 'Get currently selected node for this object'. After you choose both objects, either a green checkmark or a red 'x' will show up to let you know if the relationship that you propose to create is valid or not.

To create a component relationship, between the two objects you have selected, click on 'Component' under the 'Relation Type'. To create an associate relationship, between the two objects you have selected, click on 'Associate' under the 'Relation Type'. If you select 'Associate' from the 'Relation Type' then the 'Direction Type' box becomes active. Once the 'Direction Type' box becomes active then you need to select whether you want a one-way or a two-way relationship.

If you don't see a green checkmark and you select the 'OK' button, nothing will happen. It will act the same as the 'Cancel' button. However if you do see a green checkmark then a relationship will be created.

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Remove Relationship

This button allows you to remove either a component or a one-way associate relationship. The currently selected node will automatically be added to the aggregate or from object area when you click on this button. It can be changed at will by selecting another node in the View Pane and then clicking on the button below the object ID area for the aggregate/from object marked 'Get currently selected node for this object'. To select a component/to object follow the same procedure for changing the aggregate/from object and then click on the button below the object ID area for the component/to object marked 'Get currently selected node for this object'. Regarding removal of associate relationships, this is only a one-way removal. To remove a two-way association you need to remove both of the relationships separately.

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Find

Find allows an object to be selected and displayed in the view window by specifying either the object's complete Object ID,

or by specifying a DRM class type and finding the first object of that class in the tree hierarchy.

When using the DRM class type to search for objects, the Previous Type/Next Object of Type toolbar buttons become active to search forwards and backwards through the list of found objects matching the type specified.

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Find Previous/Next Object of Type

Once an object of a DRM class is found using the Find by DRM class type, the Previous and Next Type buttons will become active and when clicked will select and show the previous (or next) object of the same DRM class type in the tree. This feature always starts with the top-most object of the specified DRM class type in the tree.

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Bookmark

Objects can be bookmarked for easy reference. To bookmark an object, select the object in the left side of the View Pane and click the Bookmark tool on the Toolbar, the Edit Menu, or the right-click menu and then give it a name.

The bookmark name will appear in the Bookmarks Pane for that View Pane. Selecting a bookmark from the list will cause that object to be selected and displayed in the View Pane.

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Focus

Focus simply scrolls the selected object back into the view window. It is useful for large transmittals where it is easy to lose sight of the selected item when scrolling through large tree structures.

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New/Delete View

There can be multiple View Panes for one transmittal. Each view pane can display a different segment of the transmittal and have a different object selected. To open another View Pane for the transmittal currently being displayed, hit the New View button on the toolbar. To delete the currently displayed View Pane, use the Delete View button on the right side of the toolbar. If all the view panes for a transmittal are deleted, the transmittal will be closed. To close all the View Panes associated with the currently selected one use the Close menu item on the File Menu.

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A note about link objects

When you add a component or add a relationship, Focus will add the necessary link object and will notify you about what has been added. In the case where one of many link objects could be inserted, Focus will ask you to choose which one to insert. Link objects cannot be directly added or removed through Focus. The only way to add and remove link objects is to add or remove the objects that the link object is connecting.



Running an Application on a Transmittal

An application can be run on the currently selected transmittal by choosing the application from the Applications Pane. If an object is selected and the application takes a start object as a parameter, the application will be run on that object, otherwise, the application will run on the Transmittal Root. A window will be displayed, presenting an About button which gives a short description of the application, and inputs for any command-line parameters. The application will be run in a separate process and the output will be displayed in a Results window. The application may be terminated while running by clicking the Kill Process button on the Results window. Focus includes three SEDRIS applications: Depth, Syntax Checker and Rules Checker. Shown below is the window for the Depth application before it is run:

The following image shows the output window and the associated buttons:

Two of the applications, Syntax Checker and Rules Checker, will output an Error file. This file can be displayed by clicking the Show Errors button on the Results window. The Errors will be displayed in a separate window as shown below:

Clicking on an Error's Object ID button will select that object in the Focus Viewer pane. For version 4.0.1.2 this button does not work for ITR objects. Error files can be saved and viewed using the File->Open Focus Error File option.

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Runtime Variables

This section describes the following environment variable that are available for users to configure the SEDRIS runtime environment. The default values should be sufficient for most users:

Please refer to the SEDRIS documentation for more detailed information about these particular variables.

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Bug Reports and Feedback

Questions, comments, and bug reports should be sent to help@sedris.org.

If you are an associate, please send email to se-coders@sedris.org.

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Copyright © 2007 SEDRIS