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Navigating around models in the LightSpeed designer

Tagged as LightSpeed

In any visual designer, it can be hard to find things when the model gets big and complicated, and the LightSpeed designer is no exception. In this post I want to mention one little-known feature and one new feature that may help you find your way around big models.

Zooming out

If you need a quick overview of the model, you can hold down the Ctrl key and spin the mouse wheel to zoom in or out. Zooming out is a quick way to get a thumbnail view of the model, and you can then easily zoom back in to the area you want to work with.

Filtering and finding

In recent nightly builds we’ve added a Filter box to the LightSpeed Model Explorer (that tree view window you never look at). If you type into the Filter box then LightSpeed will show you only entities whose names contain the filter text (plus, optionally, any entities associated with them). Also, LightSpeed will scroll the display to these entities. So if you type the name of an entity then LightSpeed will centre on that entity — effectively giving you a Find function.

Nightly builds are available for the free Express edition from our Downloads section, and for retail editions from the store. If you’re currently running 2.2 RTM or an old nightly build, please uninstall before installing the new nightly (if you’re running a recent nightly you shouldn’t need to do this). If you’ve turned off the LightSpeed Model Explorer window, you can get it back by choosing View > Other Windows > LightSpeed Model.

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Posted by Ivan Towlson on 11 May 2009

2 Responses to “Navigating around models in the LightSpeed designer”

1. [...] been continuing to add navigational aids to the LightSpeed designer and one recent feature can be used to implement a simple form of sub-views. By a sub-view I mean [...]

   Mindscape Blog » Blog Archive » Sub-views in the LightSpeed designer May 26th, 2009

2. [...] belonged to, and then you could hide everything except one sub-domain. (We provided several other filtering options too, which can be handy to know [...]

   Mindscape Blog » Blog Archive » Large models in LightSpeed 3.1 – Part 1 May 26th, 2010

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