Let's take a super quick look at the Designer interface. We'll just cover enough so that you can get started working through our beginner's tutorial. You can learn the rest of what you need to know while creating your first model!
The Designer Interface
The Designer interface will probably be familiar to you from other applications, such as Microsoft Office.
At the top you have:
- The OnScale button, which you can click to show a menu that lets you create new projects, open projects, save projects and so on.
- The quick access toolbar, from which you can quickly save, export, print and open projects.
- The ribbon, which consists of five tabs: Home, Model Graphics, Tools, Workspace and Help.
- Buttons to download updates (where available), to switch to Post Processor and to edit settings.
Most of the application area is your workspace (5).
The Designer Workspace
The workspace consists of a view of your model and several windows.
Model View
As you create your model, you'll be able to explore it by rotating it, zooming in and out, and panning across it.
You don't actually edit the model in the visual representation of it, however. To create and edit the model, you use the Model Tree and Properties windows.
Model Tree
Creating a model in Designer is easy: it basically involves going through the Model Tree from top to bottom, from adding the materials that you want to use through to defining the outputs that you want from the simulation.
Once you've added things such as materials, a geometry (imported CAD file) or primitives (shapes), you can edit the properties of these in the Properties window.
Properties
The Properties window shows the properties of whatever you've selected in the Model Tree. For example, to edit the size or position of a primitive, click the primitive in the Model Tree to select it and then edit its Begin and/or End properties in the Properties window.
Note: You can also select a primitive by clicking it in the model view.
Parameter Table
You don't need to set the property of a primitive to a specific size. Instead you can set it to a parameter. This has a few advantages. For a start, you can enter a calculation as the value of a parameter.
You can also set a parameter to be Varying. This lets you specify a range of values to be swept during the simulation. This makes it easy to study the impact of that part of your model changing in size or position.
You manage parameters in the Parameter Table.
Customizing the Workspace
You can customize the layout of the workspace to suit you (which is why some of the screenshots and videos throughout our Help Center may look a bit different to what you see on your screen!).
Hiding a Window
From the Workspace tab of the ribbon, click Model Tree, Model Properties or Parameter Table to show or hide these windows.
Moving a Window
You can move the Model Tree, Properties and Parameter Table windows around the workspace.
To move a window, click and drag its title bar. When you hover over somewhere in the interface that the window can be docked, you'll see a preview of the window's new position in blue. Release the window to move it to this position.
You can also drag a window onto another window to make a tabbed window.
Undocking a Window
To undock a window, click 
in the title bar. This turns the window into a floating window.
You can also undock a window by dragging its title bar to somewhere that the window can't be docked.
Expanding/Shrinking a Window
To resize a docked window, hover over the area between two windows so that your cursor changes to 
or 
. Next click and drag to resize the window.
What Next?
All right, now that we've had a very quick look at the interface, let's you get started by creating a new project.