Information Window Controls
The Information window (often referred to as the Info window) allows one to
see and change the selected point in the model and the current image point.
It contains menus for opening other
windows and dialogs and performing modeling functions. It has
controls to set the brightness and contrast of the display, and a pane at the
bottom where text output appears.
Toolbar buttons
The top line of the window has some tool buttons and also shows the name of
the model file being edited. The buttons here are as follows:
- Stay on Top: The button with the pushpin can be pressed to keep the
Info window on top of all other 3dmod windows.
- Raise Windows: The button with the two triangles will raise all of
the 3dmod windows above windows from other programs.
- Undo: The button with the curving arrow pointing left will undo
changes to the model when it is enabled. Nearly all modeling changes are kept
track of in a list and can be undone.
The button will be disabled again when there are no more changes that can be
undone.
- Redo: The button with the curving arrow pointing right will redo
changes that have been undone. It is enabled once you use the Undo button,
and becomes disabled again when you have redone all undone changes.
- Show: This checkbox determines whether the program changes the
current section in image display windows to show the current model point
when it changes. When you want to switch between model
objects, contours, or points but stay on the current section, turn this button off and use
the spin button controls in this window to change object, contour, or point. Changing
the current selection with hot keys instead will still change the
current section and pan the Zap window to bring the current point into view.
Current Model and Image Point Selectors
The spin boxes on the left show the current model object, contour, and point.
As with all spin boxes, you can change a value either by typing a new value in
the box or by pressing
the up or down arrows. All three of these spin boxes wrap around to the
highest value when they are at 0 and
you press the down arrow, or from the highest value back to 0 when you press
the up arrow. The contour box shows "--x--" when there is no current
contour selected, or no contours in a new object. Similarly, the point box
shows "--x--" when there is no current point or no points in a contour, or it
is blank when there is no current contour.
The numbers of objects, contours in the current object, and points in the
current contour appear to the right of these boxes.
The spin boxes on the right show the position of the current image
point. In Movie mode, this position is always shown with a cross. In Model
mode, the position is shown with a cross only if there is no current model
point. Modeling usually leaves this position at that of the current model
point. You can change the position in the spin boxes; changing Z will change the
section that image windows display.
Contrast Controls
The Black and White sliders control the placement of an
intensity ramp that is used to scale the image data stored in the program.
Ordinarily, these data are stored as bytes with values ranging
from 0 to 255. Values below the Black setting are displayed as black
on the screen; values above the White setting are displayed as
white; and the contrast is stretched for the values in between so that they
occupy the full range from black to white. Thus, moving the sliders closer
together increases contrast; moving them both to the left or right increases
or decreases brightness, respectively.
Two additional sliders, Low and High, appear when data are
stored in the program as 16-bit values instead, which can be
done by starting the program with the -I 1 option or with a setting in
the Scaling tab of the Preferences dialog. These sliders control an initial
scaling of the data from their stored values into the range from 0 to 255,
after which the Black and White sliders control the usual
scaling from that range to the displayed values on the screen. Values below
the Low setting are truncated at zero and values above the High
setting are truncated at 255. This
arrangement allows a very small subset of the intensity range to be examined
with a reasonable number of gray levels. The number of displayed gray levels
is no longer restricted to the range between Black and White
sliders. Although the stored 16-bit values
range from 0 to 65535, the numbers to the right of these sliders are scaled to show
the original intensity values in the file. Setting the sliders to
particular values has the same effect as using the same values with
the -s scaling option when loading data into the program as bytes.
The bottom row of controls govern the automatic scaling of contrast.
- Float: With this option turned on, contrast is changed
automatically when changing sections in the Zap window so that the mean and
standard deviation of the display intensities stay the same. If data are loaded
as 16-bit integers, only the Black and White sliders are changed,
unless it is necessary to spread out the Low and High sliders
to achieve the needed contrast.
- Subarea: With this option turned on, the matching of contrast when
switching sections in determined only by the subarea of the image displayed
in the active Zap window. If the rubber band is on in that window, the
subarea is the area inside the rubber band instead of the displayed area.
In addition, intensity is floated when you change the subarea within a section,
either by panning the image or by shifting the rubber band position. This
feature is particularly useful for looking at details within images that
have very bright and very dark areas.
- Auto: This button sets the contrast so that the mean and standard
deviation of the displayed image match the target values set in the Scaling
tab of the Preferences dialog. With Subarea on, the contrast is
set for the image in the subarea. When data are loaded as 16-bit integers,
the autocontrast routine first sets the Low and High levels so
that 0.1% of pixels are saturated at 0 and 255 by the initial scaling of
data; then the Black and White levels are set to achieve the
target mean and standard deviation.
Movie and Model Mode
The radio buttons select whether the program is in movieing or modeling mode.
The main difference between these modes is the behavior of the mouse buttons; they
either start and stop movieing through the slices, or perform modeling
functions. In addition, some of the modeling functions available through menus and hot
keys do not work in Movie mode, but many other modeling functions can be performed.
Information Pane
Messages from the program are printed in the pane at the bottom. Error and
warning messages will be printed in color. You can also edit in this window,
typing text in, deleting it, and using Ctrl+C to copy text to paste elsewhere.
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