The Workspace Window
- Gary Cane
View Workspace Window
The workspace document exists within the workspace window---a window normally docked on the left side of the application's client area (see Figure 8.1). To view the workspace window, select the Workspace item from the View menu. It may sometimes be useful to hide the workspace window to provide more room on the screen to view other documents. To hide the workspace window, select the Workspace item from the View menu (or click on the window's close button). Notice that the Workspace item on the View menu toggles the visible state of the workspace window (when the window is visible, the menu item is checked, otherwise it is unchecked). The visible state of the workspace window can also be toggled with the toolbar menu button shown to the left.
(a)(b)
Figure 8.1. The workspace window, including
(a) the File-View tab and (b) the Network-View tab.
Note: Hiding the workspace window does not close a workspace document---a workspace is still active while the workspace window is hidden.
The workspace window is always displayed on top of other windows in the Design Pad G4 application. By default, it is docked on the left side of the screen. But it can be positioned (and resized) anywhere on the screen---it can be docked at the top, bottom, left side or right side of the client area or it can be floating anywhere on your computer screen (even outside of the application's client area). If the workspace window is docked and you wish to position it elsewhere, click on the window handle (two raised lines adjacent to the close button) and drag it to the desired location. To resize the workspace window while it is docked, click the right mouse button on the inner edge of the window and drag it to the desired location. When the workspace window is floating, you can resize it as you would any other window.
The workspace window is used to manage a collection of documents (e.g., schemas, hardware configurations, human-machine interfaces) and controller communication networks. The workspace window has two sections: the Files section and the Networks section. A sample workspace window is shown in Figure 8.1---Figure 8.1a displays the workspace with the Files tab active, and Figure 8.1b displays the workspace with the Networks tab active. The files section lists the entire hardware interface files, schema documents, HMI documents, and OPC server configuration files that are part of the workspace. To activate the files section, click on the Files tab. The networks section of the workspace window lists all the communication networks that the workspace manages. To activate the networks section, click on the Networks tab.
