The problem type developer can change the way a QUESTION is displayed and if he wishes he can also change the whole contents of a window, while maintaining the basic behavior of the data set, i.e. in the Condition window: assign, unassign, draw; in the Material window: create material, delete material; and so on.
With the default layout for the data windows, the questions are placed one after another in one column inside a container frame, the QUESTION's label in column zero and the VALUE in column one. For an example see picture below.
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CONDITION: Steel_section |
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CONDMESHTYPE: over body elements |
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QUESTION: Local_Axes#LA#(-Default-,-Automatic-) |
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The developer can override this behavior using TKWIDGET. TKWIDGET is defined as an attribute of a QUESTION and the value associated with it must be the name of a Tcl procedure, normally implemented in a Tcl file for the problem type. This procedure will take care of drawing the QUESTION. A TKWIDGET may also draw the entire contents of the window and deal with some events related to the window and its data.
The prototype of a TKWIDGET procedure is as follow:
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proc TKWidgetProc {event args} { |
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SYNC {
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DEPEND {
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CLOSE {
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Note: It is also allowed to add extra arguments before the 'event' argument, and provide its values in theTKWIDGET field
e.g. declare this tkwidget procedure with a first argument "-width 20"
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TKWIDGET: GidUtils::TkwidgetEntryConfigure {-width 20} |
and then define the Tcl procedure ready to get the first extra argument 'configure_options' before 'events':
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proc GidUtils::TkwidgetEntryConfigure { configure_options event args } { |
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The argument event is the type of event and args is the list of arguments depending on the event type. The possible events are: INIT, SYNC, CLOSE and DEPEND. Below is a description of each event.
- INIT: this event is triggered when GiD needs to display the corresponding QUESTION and the list of arguments is {frame row-var GDN STRUCT QUESTION}: frame is the container frame where the widget should be placed; row-var is the name of the variable, used by GiD, with the current row in the frame; GDN and STRUCT are the names of internal variables needed to access the values of the data; QUESTION is the QUESTION's name for which the TKWIDGET procedure was invoked. Normally the code for this event should initialize some variables and draw the widget.
- SYNC: this is triggered when GiD requires a synchronization of the data. Normally it involves updating some of the QUESTIONs of the data set. The argument list is {GDN STRUCT QUESTION}.
- CLOSE: this is triggered before closing the window, as mentioned this can be canceled if an ERROR is returned from the procedure.
- DEPEND: this event is triggered when a dependence is executed over the QUESTION for which the TKWIDGET is defined, ie. that QUESTION is an lvalue of the dependence. The list of arguments is {GDN STRUCT QUESTION ACTION value} where GDN, STRUCT and QUESTION are as before, ACTION could be SET, HIDE or RESTORE and value is the value assigned in the dependence.
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The picture below shows a fragment of the data definition file and the GUI obtained. This sample is taken from the problem type RamSeries/rambshell and in this case the TKWIDGET is used to create the whole contents of the condition windows. For a full implementation, please download the problem type and check it.
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CONDITION: Steel_section |
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CONDMESHTYPE: over body elements |
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QUESTION: Local_Axes#LA#(-Default-,-Automatic-) |
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Predefined TKWIDGET procedures:
There are some useful features that have been implemented in tcl procedures provided by default in GiD, inside the dev_kit.tcl file,
specially to replace the standard entry of a question by some specialized widget.
- GidUtils::TkwidgetGetFilenameButton
To show an entry and a select file button that open the dialog window to select an existent file.
- GidUtils::TkwidgetPickPointOrNode
To show an entry and a button to pick in screen the id number of a point in geometry mode or a node in mesh mode
- GidUtils::TkwidgetGetLayername
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To show a combobox with the current groups
- GidUtils::TkwidgetGetVector3D
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