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3.2 Main Window: menus and buttonsThe main window allows you to display your virtual worlds and robots described in the .wbt file. Four menus and a number of buttons are available. 3.2.1 File menu and shortcutsThe New menu item opens a new default world representing a chessboard of 10 x 10 plates on a surface of 1 m x 1 m. The following button can be used as a shortcut:
The File menu will also allow you to perform the standard file operations: Open..., Save and Save As..., respectively, to load, save and save with a new name the current world. The following buttons can be used as shortcuts:
The Export VRML item allows you to save the .wbt file as a .wrl file, conforming to the VRML 2.0 standard. Such a file can, in turn, be opened with any VRML 2.0 viewer. This is especially useful for publishing a world created with Webots on the Web. The Revert item allows you to reload the most recently saved version of your .wbt file. The following button can be used as a shortcut:
The Preferences item pops up a window with the following panels:
3.2.2 Edit menuThe Scene Tree Window item opens the window in which you can edit the world and the robot(s). A shortcut is available by double-clicking on a solid in the world. A solid is a physical object in the world (see subsection 3.3.3). 3.2.3 Simulation menu and the simulation buttonsIn order to run a simulation a number of buttons are available corresponding to menu items found under the Simulation menu:
The Fast mode performs a very fast simulation mode suited for heavy computation (genetic algorithms, vision, learning, etc.). However, as the world display is disabled during a Fast simulation, the scene in the world window stays blank until the Fast mode is stopped. The World View / Robot View item allows you to switch between two different points of view:
The default view is the world view. If you want to switch to the Robot View, first select the robot you want to follow (click on the pointer button then on the robot), and then choose Robot View in the Simulation menu. To return to the World View mode, reselect this item. A speedometer (see figure 3.2) allows you to observe the speed of the simulation on your computer. It indicates how fast the simulation runs compared to real time. In other words, it represents the speed of the virtual time. If the value of the speedometer is 2, it means that your computer simulation is running twice as fast as the corresponding real robots would. This information is relevant both in Run mode and Fast mode. ![]() Figure 3.2: Speedometer The time step can be chosen from the popup menu situated next to the speedometer. It indicates how frequently the display is refreshed. It is expressed in virtual time milliseconds. The value of this time step also defines the duration of the time step executed during the Step mode. The time step can be chosen from the popup menu situated next to the speedometer. It indicates how frequently the display is refreshed. It is expressed in virtual time milliseconds. The value of this time step also defines the duration of the time step executed during the Step mode. In Run mode, with a time step of 64 ms and a fairly simple world displayed with the default window size, the speedometer will typically indicate approximately 0.5 on a Pentium II / 266 without hardware acceleration and 4 on an Ultra Sparc 10 Creator 3D. 3.2.4 Help menuIn the Help menu, the About... item opens the About... window, displaying the license information. The Introduction item is a short introduction to Webots (HTML file). You can access the User Guide and the Reference Manual with the User Guide and Reference Manual items (PDF files). The Web site of Cyberbotics item lets you visit our Web site. 3.2.5 Navigation in the sceneThe view of the scene is generated by a virtual camera set in a given position and orientation. You can change this position and orientation to navigate in the scene using the mouse buttons. The x, y, z axes mentioned below correspond to the coordinate system of the camera; z is the axis corresponding to the direction of the camera.
3.2.6 Moving a solid objectIn order to move object, hold the shift key down while using the mouse.
3.2.7 Selecting a solid objectSimply clicking on a solid object allows you to select this object. Selecting a robot enables the choice of Robot View in the simulation menu. Double-clicking on a solid object opens the scene tree window where the world and robots can be edited. The selected solid object appears selected in the scene tree window as well. ![]() ![]() ![]() ^ page top ^ |
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