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UTILITIES

Within Utilities there are included some commands that provide information or allow actions over both the geometry and the mesh. Others can act over the whole project.



Undo



Undo window

This command allows the user undo any previous commands executed since the last time the project was saved or read. To do this, the user must select in the undo window the set of commands that have to be undone.



Preferences

Note: There are some pre-definitions or ways of working that can be set in GiD. They can be set in two ways: via the Preferences window or with the Variables command, in Utilities menu. This second option is only available in the Right Buttons or the Contextual menu. Almost all the preferences variables are present in Preferences window, but some advanced ones are only available in Variables command.
In the following description, the different Preferences options in Preferences window are shown, giving their associated variables.

The first group of Preferences (general preferences) is used to set different ways of working with GiD:



General preferences



The second group of preferences (graphical) are used to set different ways of visualizing the model. They do not change the geometry and the model information. These preferences are:



Graphical preferences



The third group of preferences are meshing options:



Meshing preferences



The fourth group of preferences are the geometry exchange (import and export) options:



Exchange preferences

Import options:

Export options:



The fifth group of preferences deals with the fonts used inside GiD:



Font preferences



The sixth group of preferences deals with numerical formats used inside GiD:



Format preferences



The seventh group of preferences contains Grid options (see section Grid):



Grid preferences



Layers

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Layers are a way to split a complex drawing into separate pieces. The idea is that any entity can belong to one layer or to none (an entity cannot belong to more than one layer). Then, it is possible to view only some layers and not others. It is also useful to easily select entities in the graphical window.



Layers window operations

Commands related to layers are:

Important: The mesh generation does not depend on the state of the layers when the generation is performed (see section Layers). All layers are meshed and every node and element will be assigned to the layer where the original geometrical entity was. The only exception to this rule is for the case of frozen layer if the option No mesh frozen layers is selected (see section Preferences->Meshing).



Tools

In this menu there are some options to change the windows appearance, and some tools related with diferent aspects of GiD.



Toolbars

In this menu, user can customize GiD toolbars. They can be inside another window or independent or disappear.

Selecting this option the following window appears:



Toolbars view and position configuration window

With this window the position: inside, outside, top left, bottom right, etc. of following item can be configured, or switched on and off. GiD toolbars are:

Note: To make the Up menu appear again, shortcut Control-U or Control-Shift-u can be used.



Save window configuration

It is possible to save a window configuration into a file. Then if GiD is open again with option -c (see section INVOKING GiD) and this file, the windows are opened in the same place and size.



Move screen objects

This option allows the user move screen objects (objects that does not own to the model), such as axes, comments, legends, etc...



Coordinates window



Entering coordinates window

This option opens a window used to enter points (see section Point definition). It can be used in any place where it is possible to enter a point.

To accept one point in this window, press Apply or press the Return key.

Option Coordinate system allows the user select between:

Option Local axes allows the user choose:

Create new point shows the current way of entering points. Button Change opens the preferences window (see section Preferences->General) where it can be changed.

Button Pick allows the user select a point from the window and it is inserted in the point fields. Then it can be edited and used.



Read batch window

A batch file can be read to execute some functions (see section Batch file) or to create an animated view of these operations. This latter case can be performed with the Read batch window.



Read batch window

Once a file is selected, it is possible to execute it interactively and make it stop in some interesting parts. To allow all the movements (rotations and so on) be executed in the same way that originally, option Write rotations in batch: must be set in preferences (see section Preferences->General), when creating the batch.

There are several ways to stop the running batch. One of them is to include stops in the show file section with the Mark break button, and selecting Internal stop. These marks can be saved in the batch file with button Write....

Option Show info lets the program write all the usual messages in the GiD messages window.



Comments

This facility is included to add comments to the pictures obtained through GiD (see section Print to file). Three lines are allowed and with the Comments button the user can impose their printing on the screen to foresee mistakes or perform changes before printing.



Animate Controls



Animate controls window

This windows allows the creation of animations while using GiD. Any of these format can be selected: MPEG, AVI True Color, AVI 15bpp (reduced number of colors: 32768) and GIF. AVI with MJPEG compression is also supported. After giving a name and a delay time between frames (for 20 frames per second, a delay of 1/20 = 50 ms. should be entered) the process can start just clicking on the start button ( film roll and arrow button), the green led will change to red.

The user can add frame by frame the pictures he wants into the animation file just clicking on the film roll and arrow button. The option Save redraws tells GiD to save every redraw automatically into the animation file, so no user intervention is needed to store frames.

The animation can be finished at any time just pressing the closed film roll button, the red led will change to green.

Note: To avoid problems when trying to view an MPEG format animation in Microsoft Windows, it is strongly recommended to use the Default menu to select a 'standard' size and press the Resize button. The graphical window will change to this 'standard' size. After finishing the animation, just selecting Default on the menu and pressing the Resize button, the previous size will be restored.

Note: The AVI files with MJPEG compression, can be viewed with xanim on Linux and unix machines, and with DirectX 8.x installed in Microsoft Windows machines.



Macros



Window that allows the creation and recording of macros

Window 'Macros' permits to create sequences of commands and give a name to them. This group of commands can also be recorded from one execution set inside the program.

It is possible to assign a keyboard shortcut to a given macro.

Note: Macros are considered as a user preference and not related to the active model. So, to transfer a set of macros from one user to another it is necessary to check the files: gid.ini or .gidDefaults.



Selection window

In those functions where user has to select some entities (creation of a surface or a volume, copy of entities ...) it is possible to use the selection window. The selection window lets you take control of the selection process.



Selection window

Note: the option Sel window is only available in the mouse menu during the selection process.

The selection window has the following options:



Calculator



Vector calculator

This option opens a scalar and vector calculator. It has its own help on right mouse button.

It's possible to transfer scalar and vector and points and distances from and to the calculator and the main graphical display.



Report



Report window

This option creates a report in html format, in which user can add figures, comments, titles, etc. This report can be saved into a file, and can be reloaded in other GiD session to edit it or to add more information to it.



Notes

This is a simple text editor to write small notes related to the model. The content is saved in a file named 'modelname'.txt, with utf-8 encoding.

Copy



Copy window

Copy is a general function that allows the user select a group of entities and copy them with a movement that can be translation, rotation, mirror, scale or offset. The process is:

Select the type of entities to copy: point, line, surface or volume, when being in geometry mode, or option nodes or elements, when being in mesh mode. All the lower entities that belong to the selected ones will be automatically computed. The type of movement needs to be chosen and the parameters for the movement are defined. Options are:

Other available options are:

Maintain layers: If this option is not set the new entities created will be placed in the layer to use; otherwise, the new entities are copied to the same layers as their originals.

Note: Entities belonging to a frozen layer (see section Layers), are not checked when sharing old entities.



Move

This command works like the command Copy but moves the entities instead of copying them. The program checks automatically if some of the entities must be copied instead of moved (for this reason, these entities belong also to non-selected entities of higher level) and perform the corresponding operation.

Options like Extrude, Multiple copy and Create contacts are disabled for movements.



Status



Project status window

Option Status gives information about useful general data of the project.



List



List entities window

Command List gives information about the selected entities. This information is read only.

If option Mass is checked, information about physical properties is given: length of lines, center of masses, area of surfaces, volume of solids. It works either for the geometry or for the mesh.

All this information can be sent to the active report (see section Report) using the button .



Renumber

When creating new entities, the label of the new entity will be the lowest number greater than 0 that still does not exist for this entity type. If an entity is deleted, a gap is left in the label's list. This gap would be filled with new entities but it is possible to renumber the geometry to change the former entity labels. There are no problems with materials and conditions applied to entities.

In geometry mode, the renumbered entities are the geometrical ones. In mesh mode, the renumbered entities are the mesh ones. In this case, renumbering not only fills the gaps in the labels list but also changes the node numbers so as to minimize the difference of node numbers within each element. This can be useful when the calculating module uses band or skyline storage methods.

Note: When generating a mesh using GiD it is not necessary to use this command because it is automatically applied when generating the mesh.



Id

This command gives the label and coordinates of an existing or new point. Different options of getting an existing point are available in Contextual menu.



Signal

With this option, the user can select one entity (point, line surface or volume), and a pair of crossed red lines signal the center of the entity in the graphical window.

They must be existing entities, except the especial case of point or nodes, where they can be existing or defined with any of the usual methods.

Option Superpose Lines (in Contextual menu) is useful when render mode is used. Depending whether it is set or not, crossed red lines will be always in front or the object or they can be partially hidden by the model.



Swap normals

This command can be applied to lines or surfaces (in geometry mode) or to elements (in mesh mode). A selection is made (see section Entities selection), and the orientation of selected entities is inverted.

Viewing commands (zoom, rotation, etc.) can be applied and the normals remain on the screen.

When this command is applied to surfaces or mesh elements, user can choose one of these options:

Note: With the option Color set (option available in the Contextual mouse menu), all surfaces or elements are drawn in filled color. Their front side will be drawn in their regular color, and their back face in yellow.

Note: Volumes are correctly oriented by GiD, regardless of their surface orientation.



Distance

Command Distance gives the distance between two existing or new points.

Dimensions

With the dimensions option it's possible to add textual information to your model. That information can be changed of layer or deleted.



There are the following options:



Deletes a "dimension". Select the dimension you want to delete and press ESC.



Select the dimension you want to edit, change the text, and click OK.



This option lets you change the appearance of a "dimension"; a "dimension" can be drawn with or without a box. Choose ShowBox on or off, select a "dimension" and press ESC.



Repair model

This option checks the coherence of the database information. Only use it if there are problems. When used, a window notifies repaired items and may give some warnings about incorrect entities.

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