Topic: DM0217

Instruction Palette

Many Do-more Designer programmers use the keyboard as the primary mode of entry for their ladder program. Some programers desire a more mouse-friendly editing mechanism, and the Ladder Editor's Instruction Palette provides that convenience. The Instruction Palette displays all of the instructions that are available for use by the programmer. The instructions are grouped into three major categories - Contacts, Coils, and Boxes. Then within those 3 major categories they are ordered by the instructions’ primary instruction classification, like Counters, Relational Contacts, Stage, etc.. The Instruction Palette is automatically displayed anytime a Ladder View has focus and Do-more Designer is in Edit Mode.

 

 

Note: the default state of the Instruction Palette makes it rather large. if there isn't sufficient screen real-estate to make good use of the palette it can be easily disable it by unchecking the ”Show this palette automatically when in Edit Mode” checkbox. The Options dialog has some options that address screen real-estate concerns.

 

The Instruction Palette can be opened manually by selecting the Edit-> Instruction Palette... option from the offline toolbar.

 

Programmers make use of the Instruction Palette as follows:
 

  1. Position the ladder editor's edit cursor on the rung where the instruction will be placed.
     

  2. Move the mouse cursor over the desired mnemonic on the Instruction Palette - the instruction's description will be displayed at the bottom of the dialog to help ”translate” the mnemonic to its function.

    Note:     hovering the mouse cursor over the mnemonic for one second will cause a tooltip to be displayed that contains a short version of the instruction's help text to be displayed.

    Note:     clicking anywhere on the tooltip will display the full help topic for that instruction.
     

  3. Click on the mnemonic text with the mouse to add the instruction to the rung.

 

Instruction Palette Options

To assist programmers with the screen real-estate issue, the Options&ldots; dialog provides the following options:

 

The programmer can disable entire classifications of instructions that won't be used, for example: Ethernet or CTRIO. Or if the common keyboard keystrokes will be used when entering contacts and coils, the common contact and coil classes (Contact-Standard, Contact-Relational, and Coil-Standard) could be disabled. Each class that is disabled will make the Palette smaller.

 

 

There are two predefined Layout orientations: Tall and Square. The decision on which orientation to use should be made considering screen resolution and monitor display type (portrait vs landscape).

 

Uncheck the Enable Instruction Tooltips selection to disable the display of the instruction's tooltip while hovering the mouse cursor over the buttons on the Instruction Palette.

 

See Also:

 

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