Interface conventions

dat.gui

Many of the tools in this collection use controls designed with dat.gui. For the most part the menus, submenus, sliders, checkboxes, color pickers, and text entry fields should be intuitive and self-explanatory. In some cases worksheets and notes specific to a particular tool will provide guidance on the usage of controls relevant to that tool. Note that dat.gui (currently) doesn't directly supply radioboxes. In cases where collections of checkboxes have been programmed to behave as radioboxes (providing a set of mutually exclusive alternatives) the appearance of the boxes has not (yet) been modified from the square form (typical of checkboxes) to a circular form (typical of radioboxes). You may notice that clicking on Close Controls leaves a tab labelled Open Controls that may be used to reopen the controls. Alternatively you may hide the controls entirely by typing the letter 'H' while the canvas is in focus. They may then be reopened by typing 'H' again. The width of the controls may be adjusted by dragging the left edge of the control window. Sometimes it's desirable to expand the width of the controls simply to increase the sensitivity of sliders.

Dragging the scene

Most scenes can be positioned on the canvas by dragging with a mouse or other pointing device. In many cases there's an option to choose between an orthographic or perspective view. Dragging will tend to be more intuitive and precise in the orthographic view.

Symbolic formulas

In most cases where you can enter your own symbolic formula, the formula will be parsed with math.js. You can expect that your guesses as to proper syntax will generally work, but in case of difficulty you can check the online docs linked to above. The constants and may be entered simply as pi and e, respectively.