Geometry Explorer Help

The items in the view menu deal with the appearance of objects on the screen and also with other windows and visual items that one can access from the main Explorer window. The items in this menu are grouped in three categories: Helper Windows, Hide/Show of geometric objects, and Miscellaneous Options.
 

Helper Windows:

• Notebook: Clicking on this menu item will pop up a window into which one can put textual information that might not fit into a text box within the geometry canvas of the main window.  For example, several pages of background information could accompany a lesson on the Pythagorean Theorem. Note: This is a text-only window. Graphics can not be inserted along with the text. If you want to have a richer document accompany your geometry construction, create a web page and link it into your geometry canvas using a web link as described below.
• Calculator: Clicking on this menu item will pop up a calculator for creating complex expressions involving geometric measurements (as well as doing basic arithmetic).  Click here for more information.
• Font: Clicking on this menu item will pop up a dialog box that allows one to select a custom font for a given selected textual object (label or text area in the canvas).

 

• Hide Object: Once you have selected an object or a group of objects, you can make it/them go away by choosing the "Hide" command from the menu. Hide does just as it says...it hides the object(s) from the canvas so that you can no longer see it. It is still there and is continuously effected by the changes made on the canvas, but is not visible unless you choose "Show Hidden".
• Hide All: Use this option to hide all objects of a particular type. Choosing this menu item will result in a submenu appearing with the type of objects to hide.  After choosing a type from this submenu all objects of that type will be hidden.
• Show All Hidden Objects: If you have hidden objects that you would now like visible once again, choosing this item will put the objects that have been hidden back on the canvas. If they are dependent upon objects on the screen that have been moved since they were hidden, they may be altered, but their geometric properties remain the same.
• Show Hidden Object:  Use this option to pop up a dialog box listing all hidden objects. Then, one can pick an object to show from the list.
• Hide All Labels: Use this option to hide all labels on the canvas.
• Show All Labels: Use this option to show the labels for all objects on the canvas.

 

• Image: Use this option to import an image into the canvas.  To activate the menu item, one must first select a point in the Canvas to "attach" the image to.  Then the menu item will be activated and choosing the menu item will cause a file dialog box to pop up. Locate the image file desired and then hit the Okay button. Note that currently only GIF and JPEG image file formats are supported for importing into the Canvas.  When the image is rendered the upper left corner will be attached to the selected point. If the point is subsequently transformed the image will also be transformed.
• SetWebLink: Use this option to create a web link on the canvas. Choosing this menu item will cause a dialog box to pop up.  In this dialog box type the link text that will appear on the screen and also the actual address of the link.  Once this is done, a text box will appear on the screen with the link text. The link can be activated using the Info tool in the Tool Panel. See here for an example.

 
• Rescale Geometry in Canvas:  Use this option to scale down (or up) the geometric constructions inside the Canvas.  This is sometimes necessary when a particular construction grows too large to fit within the current Canvas or if a construction is too small to see details.  Upon clicking on this menu item the dialog box shown below will pop-up.  In this dialog box we set the scaling factor for the Canvas.  A scaling factor less than 1 will make all constructions appear larger, since we are shrinking the coordinate bounds on the Canvas but keeping the screen Canvas window constant in size.  A scale factor of 0.5 will have the effect of zooming in on the constructions in the Canvas by a factor of 2.