Geometry Explorer Help

The Tool Panel:

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The Tool Panel is the set of buttons on the left side of the Geometry Explorer window. The Tool Panel allows you to perform various geometric creations and constructions. It is divided into four sub-panels: The Create Panel, Construct Panel, Transform Panel, and the Color Chooser.

There are 24 icon buttons on the tool panel, as well as various menus and checkboxes. The best way to learn their functions is to play with them for awhile, testing out what you can and cannot do, observing what the effect is on a specific construction in the Canvas.  Icons depict the functionality of buttons.  Sometimes the functionality is quite clear, other times it is harder to figure out, but icons serve as reminders to what buttons do.

The Create Panel: Use the Create panel to create basic geometric objects, select them, label them, and gain information about them.  Each of the eight buttons within the Create panel is enabled all the time.  For more details see the Create Panel help page.

The Construct Panel:  Use the Construct panel to construct geometric objects which depend upon simpler objects.  For example suppose that you have already constructed a segment (with the segment tool) and a point somewhere off the segment. Then, you could construct a perpendicular to the segment through the point by:

If you would like to do a specific construction but nothing happens when you click on the button, you have not specified the correct information necessary to do that particular construction.  In order to find out what objects must be selected for a particular construction, go to the Construct Panel help page.  Each of the buttons in the Construct panel are initially in a disabled state (greyed-out) because none of the constructions can be performed from scratch.  Once the objects that are necessary for the particular construction have been selected, that particular button will become enabled (and gain a darker appearance).  Clicking on the enabled button will automatically perform the construction using the selected objects.

The Transform Panel: Use the Transform panel to perform transformations on geometric objects.  Each transformation requires you to select the object to be transformed along with other information that is specific to that transformation.  One can also define compound transformations that are built from simple transformations.  For more information, see the Transform Panel help page.

The Color Panel: Use the Color panel to set the color of an object in the canvas.  Select all objects that you desire to be a particular color. Then click the mouse on the appropriate color square in the Color panel.  Colors can be altered in the Color Panel.  If you hold the control key down while clicking on a color square, a dialog box will pop up, allowing you to change the color of that square.