Creating Tools

You can create your own custom tools to contain actions that you create or copy from other tools. For example, you might want to create a new tool to contain the actions you use most often, or actions you create for a specific purpose. For more information on tools, see Choosing a Tool.

The following instructions lead you through the process of creating a new tool.

To add a new tool, click the pull-down menu button at the top right of the Tool Palette.

Select Edit Tools from the pull-down menu, as shown above.

The Tool Palette displays the Cancel Edits, Accept Edits, and New Tool buttons.

To move a tool—Click on the move button (

) and drag the box to the location you want it to appear.

To delete a tool—Click the X button next to the tool you want to remove.

To edit a tool—Click on the Edit link next to the tool you want to change (only available for custom tools, not system tools).

Click New Tool.

The Add New Tool dialog appears:

The following screen capture and table explains the fields in this dialog and how to use them.


Tool Element	Item	Description
Tool Name	MyTools	This name becomes the title of the new tool. Each tool title must be unique.
Icon Filename	`glowing_gas.jpg`This image is found in the `examples/data` directory of your IDL distribution. If no image is selected, IDL uses a default icon.	This image becomes the icon for the tool. Size requirement is 32 x 32 pixels. If the image is larger, IDL resizes it automatically and renames the file by appending "_32" to the file name. For example, this file was renamed to `glowing_gas_32.jpg`.

Enter the information for your new tool. When the dialog information is correct, click OK.

The new tool you just added appears in the tools list:

Click Accept Edits.

Adding Actions to a Tool

You can add actions to system or custom tools. One way to add actions is Copying Actions to Tools. Another is adding custom actions that you define. The following instructions show an example custom action that uses an IDL procedure that is not an iTools command:

Click on the action toggle (

) to expand the Tool Palette to display the action. (You can also drag the right border of the Tool Palette to the right to display the action.)

To add a new action, click on a tool. (This example uses the custom "My Tools" tool created in Creating Tools.)

Click the pull-down menu button at the top right of the Tool Palette.

Select Edit Actions from the pull-down menu, as shown above. The action area now appears with Cancel Edits and Accept Edits at the top and New Action below that.

Tip
You can also use the pop-up context menu accessed from a tool to add a new action or edit and existing one.

Click New Action. The Add New Action dialog appears.

The following action definition uses the VELOVECT procedure:

The following table describes the action definition:


Action Element	Item	Description
IDL Procedure	VELOVECT	Calls the IDL VELOVECT procedure to display velocity vectors.
Positional Arguments	U, V	Defines the data variables to use.
Keywords	MISSING=18	Specifies that values greater than 18 are ignored.
	/DOTS	Defines the missing values to be shown as dots.
Title	Velocity Vectors	Title appears in the action by default.
Description	Produces a velocity vector plot showing values greater than 18 as dots	Description appears on mouse hover over the action.

Click OK.

Click Accept Edits.

The new action now appears under the My Tools Actions:

Now you can test the new action with some random data.

Enter the following lines at the IDL command line:

U = RANDOMN(S, 20, 20)

V = RANDOMN(S, 20, 20)

You will see three new variables in the Variables view (S, U, and V).

Drag the U and V variables and drop them on the My Tools action.

Click the VELOVECT button to visualize the data.

Copying Actions to Tools

You can easily move actions between tools. You might find this functionality most useful when creating a custom tool. For example, you could create a new tool that contains the actions that you need to use most often. Those actions could include a plot action, a surface action, a map action, and some custom actions. Start by copying the actions you use from other tools into your new tool. Then add the custom actions you need to the new tool.

The procedure for copying an action to a tool:

Make sure you are viewing the IDL Visualize Perspective. (Click the Visualize button (

) in the upper right of the Workbench.)

Click on the action toggle button (

) to expand the Tool Palette to display the action. (You can also drag the right border of the Tool Palette to the right to display the action.)

Click on the tool that you want to copy from to display the associated actions.

Click in the action you want to copy, and drag it to another tool. The following screen shot shows an example:

Repeat for all the actions that you want in the tool.

The following example shows a custom tool with several actions copied from existing tools:

Tip
To add custom actions to a tool, see Creating an Action.