Creating and Modifying Toolbars

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From version 5, SIMetrix allows the complete customisation of toolbars. You can modify the definitions of existing toolbars and buttons, as well as create new toolbars and new tool buttons. This section explains how.

Modifying Existing Toolbars and Buttons

You can rearrange the button layout of existing toolbars by modifying the 'Set' option variables that define them. In the case of the schematic component buttons, this can be done via a simple GUI. See menu View|Configure Toolbar... .

For other toolbars use the command Set to reassign the buttons. The following table shows the name of the 'Set' variable to use for each one.

For example, the following will add a 'New Schematic' button to the schematic file tool bar:

To determine the current definition, use the GetOption function with the 'Set' variable name as described in the table above. For example:

Redefining Button Commands

You can change the command executed when a button is pressed using the command DefButton. This is useful if you want to change the symbol placed for one of the component buttons. For example if you wanted to change one of the NMOS buttons, you could do something like:

You can redefine any of the pre-defined buttons. SeePre-defined Buttons for a complete list.

Defining New Buttons and Editing Buttons

You can define completely new buttons with your own graphic design and add them to an existing toolbar. The same method can also be used to redefine the graphics for existing buttons.

This is done using the command CreateToolButton. These are the steps to take:

1. Create a graphical image for the button. This should be in a windows bitmap (.bmp), portable network graphic (.png) or JPEG (.jpg) format. You can use almost any paint application to do this. But, if you want to define a mask - that is you wish to define transparent areas - then you must use an editor capable of creating 'portable network graphics' (PNG) images. However, this is rarely necessary in practice and none of the built in graphics define a mask. This is because SIMetrix will automatically create one that makes the area outside the perimeter of the image transparent. The result is usually satisfactory.
   
   You can make your graphic any size, but to be compatible with the built-in images, you should make them 16x16 pixels. The built-in graphics are all 16 colour, but you can use any colour depth supported by your system.
   
   When you have created your image, you should save or copy it to the images directory. This is located at simetrix-root/support/images, where simetrix-root is the top level directory in the SIMetrix tree.
2. Execute the command CreateToolButton. As with menu and key definitions, the definitions created by this command are not persistent that is they will be lost when SIMetrix exits. To make permanent definitions, you should place the commands in the start up script. See Startup Script for more details.
   
   CreateToolButton will not add the button to any toolbar nor does it assign a command to be executed when it is pressed. These operations are described in the following steps.
3. Define a command to be executed when this button is pressed. This is done using the command DefButton. Again, this should be place in your startup script.
4. Add the button to a toolbar. See Modifying Existing Toolbars and Buttons to find out how to add this to an existing toolbar. If you wish to create a new toolbar for the new button, see Creating New Toolbars.

1. First you would create a graphical image called, for example, diffres.png. Copy this to the images directory as described above.
2. Execute (or place in startup script):

   CreateToolButton /class component diffres diffres.png

   "Place Diffused Resistor"

   (This must all be on one line)
   
   This will create a button called 'diffres' that we will refer to in the following steps. The switch /class component identifies the button as one that places a component and so will be listed in the GUI based system to edit component toolbars. (See schematic menu View|Configure Toolbar...) . This will make adding the button to a component toolbar a simple operation.
3. Execute (or place in startup script):

   DefButton diffres "inst /ne diffressym"

   where diffressym is the name of the schematic symbol created for the diffused resistor.
4. To add to the button to a component toolbar, simply select schematic menu View|Configure Toolbar... You should see 'Place Diffused Resistor' on the left hand side. Select and press Add to add to the toolbar, then use the up down buttons to choose a suitable position.

Creating New Toolbars

To create a completely new toolbar, use the command CreateToolBar. This will create an empty toolbar.

To add buttons to a new toolbar, you must use the command DefineToolBar. You can add both pre-defined and user-defined buttons to a custom toolbar.

Pre-defined Buttons

The following table lists all the buttons that are pre-defined. All of these buttons may be redefined if required.

The bitmaps are embedded in the SIMetrix binary, but can also be found on the install CD in the directory script/images.