To show and hide the shelf window

1. On the Windows menu, choose Shelves.

   The Shelves window appears.

   • The Shelves window provides a floating window in which to keep commonly used tools.

     Alias, however, provides another, even more convenient location for shelves. In these tutorials, you will use the shelf area in the control panel.

   • Since you will not be using the Shelves window, you can close it.
2. Choose Windows > Shelves again to hide the Shelves window, or click the Shelves window’s close button.

To help demonstrate how to make new shelves, clear the default shelves and make new shelves specific to these tutorials.

Before you clear the default shelves, save them, so you can retrieve them later.

To save the initial shelf set

1. Choose Windows > Control Panel. The control panel appears.
2. Hold the on the Shelf menu button at the top of the control panel’s shelf area to open the options menu.

   

3. Drag down to the Save option and release the mouse button.

   A file requester appears.

4. Click in the Object name text field and type Default, then click Save.

In the next procedure, you will start a new shelf of tools commonly used in curve fitting in preparation for the lesson on fitting curves to scan data.

To clear the existing shelf set and create a new one

1. Hold the on the menu button at the top of the shelf area to open the options menu. Notice how the menu button is now called Default, after the name of the current shelf.

   

2. Choose New from the options menu.

   A requester appears asking for the name of the new shelf.

   

3. Click in the text box, press the key to clear the text, and type CurveFit. Click OK to name the new shelf.

   

   The old Shelf set is deleted and a new, empty shelf appears in the shelf area.

   Now you can begin adding tools to the new shelf.

4. In the Palette window, find the Curve Edit palette.
5. With the , drag the Fit Curve tool onto the CurveFit shelf in the control panel.

   The tool appears in the shelf.

   You could move the entire Curve Edit palette onto the shelf by dragging its title tab, but you only want a selection of tools from the full palette.

Next, add curve drawing tools to the palette.

Since you will often need to create curves of different degree in technical surfacing, it would be useful to have customized versions of tools with different settings.

The shelf allows you to do this. When you drag a tool onto a shelf, the new copy of the tool keeps the settings it had when it was dropped on the shelf, independent of the original tool in the palette.

Using this technique, create several versions of the two original curve creation tools, New curve (edit pts ) and New curve (cvs) .

For each version, assign different settings for the Degree option.

To add versions of the New curve tools to the shelf with different options

1. In the Curves palette, double-click New Curves > New Edit Point Curve and open the tool’s option window.

2. (Remember that you can also choose New Edit Point Curve from the palette menu).

   The New Edit Point Curve option window appears.

   

   The options let you set the knot spacing (parameterization) and degree of the new curve.

3. Make sure Knot Spacing is set to Uniform and Create Guidelines is off.

   

4. Set the Degree option to 2.
5. Find the tool icon at the top of the option window.

   

   This icon represents the tool as configured with these settings.

6. Press the on the tool icon at the top of the option box and drag it to the CurveFit shelf.

   

   Now when you choose this icon in the shelf, the New Curve (edit pts) tool creates degree 2 curves.

7. Back in the option window, set the Degree to 3.

   

8. Use the to drag the tool icon at the top of the option window to the shelf.

   

   Another copy of the tool is added to the shelf. When you choose this copy of the tool, the New Curve (edit pts) tool will create degree 3 curves.

9. Click Exit at the bottom of the option window to close the window.

To rename the tools

1. Move the mouse over the CurveFit shelf’s title tab and press the to show the shelf’s menu.

   

   Note that the two versions of the tool have the exact same name and icon.

   To be able to distinguish between the tools, rename them.

2. Find the first version of New Curve by Edit Points you dragged to the shelf.

   If you cannot remember which is which, double-click the two icons to see their option windows. You want the version with the Degree option set to 2.

3. Hold down the (Windows) or (Mac) key and double-click the tool icon.

   A name requester appears.

   

4. Double-click in the text box and type Edit_pt_Deg_2, then click OK to rename the tool.
5. Hold down the (Windows) or (Mac) key and double-click the second copy of the New Curve by Edit Points tool.
6. Double-click in the text box and type Edit_pt_Deg_3, then click OK to rename the tool.
7. Hold down the on the title tab of the shelf to open the shelf menu.

   The two copies of the tool are now distinguishable in the menu, but still have identical icons.

   We recommend you keep the shelves collapsed and use the shelf menus to choose tools. This saves space in the shelf.

To remove a tool from the shelf

1. Add another tool to the CurveFit shelf.

   Let’s now assume that this was a mistake and you want to remove the tool.

2. Hold the over the tool’s icon in the shelf.

   

   The name of the tool appears.

3. With the held down, drag the label to the upper-right corner of the window and position the cursor over the trash can icon.

   

4. Release the mouse button. The tool disappears from the shelf.

   You can also delete groups of tools by dragging a tab with the middle mouse button to the trash can.

You may have noticed that icons are a bit crowded on the shelf. The large icons are good when you are learning which icon is which, but now you can switch to the small icon size to save space in the shelf.

To change to the small icon size

1. In the Preferences menu, choose General Preferences ❒. The Interface options appear.

   

2. Set the Tool Icons to Small.

   

   If you want, you can also turn on the icon labels option to display name labels for all the icons.

3. Click the Go button at the bottom of the window to apply the changes.

   

   Alias loads smaller versions of all the tool icons.

You have seen how to create shelves with customized tools. In later lessons, you will load pre-made shelves containing all the tools you need to complete the tutorials.