In this tutorial we introduce you to the main parts of the Netica GUI (Graphical User Interface).

The Main Window is Netica's outermost window. It is visible as soon as you launch Netica and looks something like this:

The Main Window is a standard Microsoft Windows window that can be resized, minimized, closed, dragged, etc.

Buttons (and menu items) that are grayed out are disabled. They become colored when it is possible to use them. When first launched, the message window is the only window, and the only functions available are creating a new network, opening an existing network on file, or saving the current window (in this case, the Message Window's contents) to disk.

1.2 Message Window

The Message Window is initially minimized, but you will often want to open it for examination, especially if anything surprising happens, or Netica displays an error dialogue. The message window contains a step-by-step textual account of all the main processing steps, including useful details that cannot be easily displayed elsewhere. When reports are generated, they are written to the Message Window.

Here is a sample snapshot of the message window, after several processing steps:

1.3 Menu Bar

Explore the menu bar just to familiarize yourself with the many functions that are available. You will be learning the majority of these functions through the remainder of the tutorial. It is best to learn each function in a real context, when you are motivated to use it, so we will not attempt to discuss menu functions here.

Help System

For the beginning Netica user, probably the most important Menu item is Help. Netica has a very sophisticated and complete on-screen help system. When you have any questions regarding what a particular function does, or how to operate Netica, you will almost certainly find it covered somewhere under Help. Try it out and use if often! We at Norsys have put a great amount of effort into the Help System and are very proud of it.

1.4 Tool Bar

The tool-bar buttons are just convenient shortcuts to functions that are available on the Menu bar (see above). Their purpose is to save you button clicks. The default tool-bar buttons are those that many users will use often. If you would like to add or remove some buttons, simply select Window->"Customize Toolbar". The Customize Toolbar dialog box will appear, shown here, and you can easily add and remove buttons, as desired.

1.5 Net Window

You can have any number of net windows. They can open or minimized. Each can be associated with a special text window called the Description window. Below we see two net windows, one of which has its description window open.

The size of the net displayed in the net window can be controlled by the zooming controls available under the "Window" menu. See B.2.9 Net Resizing and Zooming for details. The choice of font under the Format menu will also affect display size and appearance.

1.6 Node Dialog Box

When you double click on any node, it's Node Dialog Box will appear.

From it you can set any property of that node. Try raising any node's dialog box and explore all the properties available to be set or changed. We will be covering many of these in the next tutorial.