Browsing your circuit

As well as using the Contextual parameters/variables view windows to view a component’s parameters and variables, you can open the Model Explorer Model Explorer through the Edit > Show / Hide menu or the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+E.

You can select a component in the Model Explorer to perform the same actions as you would in the sketch area through a right-click. When you select a component in the Model Explorer, it is highlighted in the sketch, and vice versa.

The Model Explorer is most useful with a large sketch containing many components and supercomponents as we will see in later sections.

Step 1: Display/Hide component labels

display component labels

hide component labels

Procedure

1. Select a component on the sketch and right-click.

A Labels menu appears: Figure 9: Labels menu

2. Select the Show component labels submenu.

The submodels that have been selected for each component are displayed as labels.

3. Select the Hide component labels submenu.

The labels disappear.

Results

Using this facility in the current example leads to what is shown in the following figure. Submodels have short names such as mass_friction_endstops [MECMAS21] which is the submodel associated with the 2-port mass.

At this stage the names will mean very little to you but as you become more experienced, the information can be important.

Figure 10: Labels of the components

Your system is now complete and you are ready to proceed to the next stage.

Before going further, it may be a good idea to save the sketch. To do so, follow the procedure below:

Step 2: Save a model

Procedure

Select File > Save.

A message appears at the bottom of the window stating that the model has been saved.