15.8 Navigation XML Files
The Cubit GUI includes a section referred to as the Command Panel. It is comprised of a hierarchy of buttons used to navigate to panels that accept user input and generate Cubit command strings. The following example shows the command panel used to create a sphere. The user navigates to the command panel by pressing the "Mode - Geometry" button, then the "Operation - Create Geometry" button, followed by the "Entity - Create Volumes" button, then finally selecting the "Sphere" option from the pull-down menu.
Any user can modify the contents of the button hierarchy by adding, deleting, or modifying buttons and command panels. The button hierarchy is expressed in a series of XML files located in the directory ’bin/xml.’
The controlling XML file is named, "CubitNavigationRoot.xml." A snippet from the file is shown below:
The first three levels of the hierarchy are managed in this file. Subsequent levels of the hierarchy are managed in more specific XML files. For geometry navigation, subsequent xml files are maintained for creation, modification, deletion, and so forth. The snippet below is from "GeometryCreateNavigation.xml". The creation hierarchy for all geometry entity types is included in this file.
The navigation files are implemented in two different hierarchies– an entity-based hierarchy and an action-based hierarchy. The default hierarchy for Coreform Cubit is the action-based hierarchy.
Users may modify the Label, ToolTip, Search, or Icon filename. Users may remove entire categories if necessary. Users should not modify NavigationNode or NavigationReference tags.
Users may create their own command panels using Qt and add them to the hierarchy.