Using the Electric VLSI Design System

Chapter IV: THE DISPLAY

| ## 3: Creating and Deleting Editing Windows |

### Multiple Editing Windows

Initially, there is only one editing window on the screen. Electric allows you to create multiple editing windows, each of which can show a different facet. You can also have the same facet in more than one window to see it at different scales and locations.

New windows are created by checking the appropriate checkbox in the Edit Facet... command of the Facets menu. New windows can also be created with the New Window command of the Windows menu. To delete a window, click its close box, or use the Delete Window command of the Windows menu. Note that you cannot delete the last window on UNIX systems, since the pulldown menus are part of the edit windows.

### Splitting Editing Windows

Each editing windows can be split into multiple subwindows by using subcommands of the Window Partitions command. The Split subommand divides the current window in half, either vertically or horizontally, When splitting windows, the aspect ratio of the editing window and its contents are used to determine how the window is split.

Once the original is split, only one half is the current window, and its border is highlighted. The current window changes, however, whenever the cursor moves to another window and a command is issued. The Split command can be used repeatedly to subdivide windows into halves, quarters, and so on. Once the initial split has been made, there is no longer a choice between horizontal and vertical splits: Each division follows an alternating sequence to achieve a clean binary tree of windows.

To undo the partitioning of a window, use the Delete subcommand of the Window Partitions command of the Windows menu, which deletes the current partition and merges it with its neighbor. This command can be issued only to a window at the bottom of the subdivision tree. To back out completely from multiple partitions, use the Make 1 Window command, which returns to a single partition.

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