Before we go into detail on how to use the GUI Editor, let's take a quick look at the major tools it offers. You can open Torque's GUI Editor by pressing the F10 key found at the top of your keyboard. Once you open the GUI Editor you will be presented with a screen that looks something like Figure 3.

Figure 3

At the top of the GUI Editor is the menu bar. Here, you'll find various utility functions to help you easily edit GUI controls. The first item on the menu bar is the File dropdown as seen in Figure 4. It contains options for creating a new GUI, and saving the current GUI, as well as help options, and the ability to toggle the GUI Editor off. The second item on the menu bar is the Edit dropdown, as seen in Figure 5. Here you will find options for cut, copy, paste, and a very handy Select All command, which will select all the GUI controls in the editor at once.

Figure 4

Figure 5

The third item on the menu bar is the Layout dropdown as seen in Figure 6. This dropdown contains various helper actions which allow you to determine the layout and position aspects of a GUI control. Align Left, Align Right, Align Top, and Align Bottom help you control the alignment of your GUI control, as their names suggest. Bring to Front and the Send to Back options will allow you to control the drawing order of the GUI controls. The fourth item on the menu bar is the Move dropdown as seen in Figure 7. Here you will find various utilities to help you more precisely position your GUI controls.

Figure 6

Figure 7

Just below the menu bar are three dropdown menus. The first dropdown to the far left, shown in Figure 8, will create new GUI controls to place. To create a new control, just select the control type from the dropdown list. The second dropdown menu, located in the middle and shown in Figure 9, allows you to switch between previously saved GUI windows/collection of controls. Finally, the third dropdown menu, located on the far right and shown in Figure 10, allows you to view and edit your GUI in different resolutions.

Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10

To the far right of the GUI Editor, there is a long frame that stretches over the entire height of the screen, as seen in Figure 11. This pane contains the GUI Tree View and the Inspector Dialog. The GUI Tree View displays all the controls for the current screen in a hierarchical list. This list will help you select the various controls you've created as well is determine at a glance which controls are children of other controls.

The Inspector Dialog is below, and it contains various control options and properties based upon the kind of GUI control you currently have selected. You will do most, if not all, of your control editing here. The most common options are the profile - which allows you to further define how a control looks and acts, position - which contains a space delimited set of values which describe where on screen the control is placed, and the extent field - which defines the size of the control. The entire right-hand vertical pane is draggable, see Figure 12, to allow you to expose more of the working screen or easily read and edit the GUI Tree View and the Inspector Dialog fields.

Figure 11

Figure 12