Customizing your CIRCAD


This section is designed to help you customize your CIRCAD to meet your individual needs.  Most of this information can be found in the manual and help files, but has been provided here in one consolidated document.  There are many ways to customize your CIRCAD, beginning with simple template customization, all the way through powerful keyboard macro construction.  Lets start with something simple and them move on.

Template Customization
The template files are standard data files much like what you would create with one noteworthy exception, they don't contain any significant data.  When the "File New" function has been selected CIRCAD simply opens the appropriate file, therefore any modifications made to the template file will be reflected in the new file.  this can be something simple, such as name or corporate information in the title block, to rulers and fancy corporate logos.  To do this the steps would be as follows:

1. Open CIRCAD.
2. Browse to the template folder (C:\Program Files\CIRCAD\Template in the standard install).
3. Make the desired modifications.
4. Save the file.

Color Setup
CIRCAD has four user definable system colors:
Grid Dot color
Background color
Highlight color
Attention color.
These are all definable in Setup Grid Dots dialog box.  Simply type <SD> and then click on the color brick to change a fields color.  These parameters are unique to each data file.  If you
want them to be set as default you will need to save them into the template files.

Setup Options
The Setup Options dialog box is used to control many of CIRCAD various generic CIRCAD parameters.  



Always on top causes CIRCAD to position itself so that no other applications will cover it.

Display Log Files invokes the View Window each time a .log file is created.  An example of this is the error log generated by the Netlist In function.

Enable Popup Menus that occur when the mouse is clicked while no function is in effect.

Enable Animated Icon controls the lock or unlock status of the CIRCAD's scrolling icon.  Some video configurations have poor processing of animated icons.

Enable Sound Blaster Tones sends the CIRCAD sounds to the installed sound board rather than the PC speaker.

Expand Open File Name list box vertically stretches the files portion of the File Open dialog box and forces the details button.

Open Project from Schematic or PCB opens all files with the same file name prefix when opening a file.

Zoom In/Out with mouse buttons allows CIRCAD to zoom in on a left mouse click and out on a right click when there is no function in effect.

Un-Do beyond save to disk will not clear the Un-do buffer during a periodic save.

Notify before Re-Do purge displays a message before starting a function that will clear the Re-Do buffer.

Enter sleep mode after 1 minute
Releases the CIRCAD graphcal "lock" on the screen after 1 minute. This will prevent crashes on some computers when entering sleep mode

Save current window size and position stores CIRCAD's window parameters to be recalled upon the next entry to CIRCAD.

Save current Printer Setup parameters saves the current printer setup.  These settings are unique to CIRCAD and will not affect the printing of any other Windows application.  They will be loaded each time CIRCAD is invoked.

Save current Open File Name mask saves the currently selected File Open mask as the default.

Set factory default keystroke macros
This option will restore the default values for the keyboard macros.  Here is a list of the default values:

F1 Place Line   Alt F1 Grab Line
F2 Place Arc   Alt F2 Grab Arc edge
F3 Place Pad   Alt F3 Grab Pad
F4 Place Text   Alt F4 Grab Text
F5 Place Ortho-line  Alt F5 Grab Item
F6 Place Component  Alt F6 Grab Component Only
F7 Place Via   Alt F7 Grab Component
F8 Place Vertex   Alt F8 Grab Vertex
F9 Zoom Re-draw  Alt 2 Fraction ½
F10 Zoom Re-draw layer  Alt 4 Fraction ¼

Ctl F1 Edit Line   Shift F1 Delete Line
Ctl F2 Edit Arc   Shift F2 Delete Arc
Ctl F3 Edit Pad   Shift F3 Delete Pad
Ctl F4 Edit Text data  Shift F4 Delete Text
Ctl F5 Edit Text parameters Shift F5 Delete Multi-line
Ctl F6 Edit Component  Shift F6 Delete Component
Ctl F7 Locate Component Shift F7 Delete Grabs
Ctl F8 Krump Component Shift F8 Delete Vertex
Ctl F9 Snap to Item

Set Explorer File Type registration allows the user to setup the file extensions that are to be associated with CIRCAD.  Once a file extension has been associated with CIRCAD un-associating them will not restore the original associations, it will simply remove them.