Panels Where And Why

<sidebar>Sidebar: Flowcode Help Overview:Panels</sidebar> In the Flowcode environment there are two panels which are used as a place to store components which are referenced by your program. In previous versions of Flowcode there was only one fixed panel available for the components so why did we move away from the single panel approach?

1) The dashboard panel is used as a replacement for the standard panels used in previous versions of Flowcode. There are some differences still in that you can zoom in and out but the overall functionality is about the same. The dashboard name was used as we wanted to be able to re-create systems such as cars where there is a set of indicators or controls which can be constantly available to the user.

2) The system panel is used to allow new features in Flowcode, such as mechanical based components or simulations. This allows us an area to build a system like we would in real life, in 3D. We can rotate around an object as well as being able to create multiple views so top, side, and perspective views can all be seen at once. We can also manipulate the camera for the first instance of the system panel by using the camera simulation macros. This is useful for example for following a robot around as it moves through the simulated environment which could be a maze or obstacle course.

Components can be freely moved between panels by selecting the component and dragging between the panel windows.

A component created by a user can only exist on one of the panel types to allow the user dragging on the component to choose which panel the component will live on.