Diamond Version 5 User Manual: Working with Diamond

Side-by-side Structure Picture Editing

Edit a structure picture side-by-side with the other pictures' thumbnails in a multiple picture document

You can view structure pictures (if a document contains multiple structure pictures) side-by-side:
- A preferred picture under a tab, whereas the residual N-1 pictures appear either as links or as thumbnails below the picture in the edit view.
- Multiple tabs.
- Edit another picture by clicking on the link button in the same tab, or in another tab.
- Edit view and thumbnails of the residual preferred pictures right beneath the edit view.

Previous article: Picture Edit View and Thumbnails Preview
Next article: Working with structure picture thumbnails

Activating tab and link bar

The default setting In Diamond version 5 does not show the tab bar but uses the Caption bar as well as the More Pictures docking window, since the Caption bar gives a better overview, which is the current picture and what are the associated structure data set and document (file) title and gives additional links to more pictures of the structure data set, if any, while the pictures can be previewed as thumbnails in the More Pictures window.

Screenshot of version 5 with file Na3PS4-10-pictures.diamdoc opened with Caption bar and More Pictures docking window but without tab bar.

To activate the tab and link bar, use the corresponding commands from the sub-menu Pictures Viewing of the View menu. The easiest way is to use the command Tab and Link Overview:

This activates the tab bar above the picture in the edit view as well as the link bar below the picture being edited. The next time you open the Pictures Viewing sub-menu, the two commands Show Tab Bar and Show Link Bar have their checkmarks set. You can hide the tab bar and/or the link bar by clicking on the corresponding command:

Screenshot (pictures pane only) with tab bar and link bar. Four of the ten pictures are preferred under tabs, amongst them the picture being edited "Super cell 2x2x2 ...".

Use the command Show Link Thumbnails to view the "other" pictures that are not "preferred" (which means under tabs) as thumbnails rather than just their titles:

Screenshot with link thumbnails instead of link bar, showing previews of the six residual pictures not under tabs.

If you have N multiple preferred pictures, which means multiple tabs, you can get an overview of all preferred (tabbed) pictures with the command Show Tab Thumbnails (in version 4 called "Tab Overview"). The current picture in the edit view and the N-1 residual pictures as thumbnails right beneath the edit view:

Screenshot with thumbnails of the preferred (tabbed) pictures

Editing a structure picture while glancing at the others

The following part of this article describes using tab and link bar (or link thumbnails). Tab and link bar were introduced in Diamond version 4. The screenshots have been made with version 4, too, but look similar to version 5 when the caption bar is switched off.

May be you just edit one single structure picture in your Diamond document, but when you create different views of your structure, may be with various designs for printing or for a presentation, it is practically to have thumbnails of at least some of the other pictures at a glance.
Some of them may be more important than the rest - for the moment you are editing. So you can arrange your preferred pictures on tabs, while you have access to the residual pictures by link buttons. (This may remind you - not coincidentally - at tabs in Internet browsers.)

The following screenshot shows a typical scenery when working with several structure pictures.
1) The document "Na3PS410-10-pictures.diamdoc" contains one structure data set.
2) There are -- for this data set -- ten structure pictures.

Na3P4S10 sample with ten structure pictures and powder pattern; screenshot made with Diamond version 4. (Full size image ...)

This is how it looked in Diamond version 3.x (provided you have the two docking panes "Navigation" and "Thumbnails" open and docked and the "Data brief" and "Properties" open in the data pane). "Picture 10" is the last edited of the ten pictures when the document was saved, so it re-appears in the structure picture view the next time you open "Na3PS4-10-pictures.diamdoc". The residual nine pictures are available from the caption bar (the bar between main toolbar and structure picture/data pane) -- or from "Navigation" or "Thumbnails" docking window.

And this is how it looks in Diamond 4 (and version 5 when tab and link bar have been activated and caption bar is switched off) when you open the same document "Na3PS4-10-pictures.diamdoc". (Note: The diamdoc file was saved with Diamond version 3.) Depending on your individual settings, the four docking window titles may not or not all appear hidden -- and there may be a different table or the atom list or so in the data pane to the right. But the structure pictures view shows one tab for "Picture 10" and so-called "link buttons" at the bottom to access the residual nine pictures. (The left/right arrows at the right end of the "link bar" can be used to scroll horizontally, if needed.)

Move the mouse cursor over the link buttons "Unit cell with PO4 polyhedra" and "Super cell 2x2x2..." -- and semi-transparent thumbnails will appear giving you a preview to these pictures:

To switch to another picture, say "Super cell with 2x2x2 with NaS polyhedron", simply click on the corresponding link button. After that, "Super cell 2x2x2 with NaS polyhedron" is under the tab and in picture edit mode. ("Picture 10" has gone to the link bar.) To open "Picture 7" into an additional tab (not into the tab currently occupied by "Super cell 2x2x2...", which means you create a second tab), click on the right arrow symbol of the "Picture 7" link button or hold the Ctrl key while clicking on the "Picture 7" link button.

Do the same with "Picture 6" and "Unit cell with PO4 polyhedra", so you have four tabs in total -- and six other pictures' link buttons left:

Note:

We now change to "tab overview" by clicking the middle of the three buttons right beneath the rightmost tab. (The left one of the three buttons creates a new picture into a new tab with -- several options available through the drop-down arrow key --, whereas the right one opens a list of tabbed pictures' titles to switch to.)

This leads to this scenery -- that comes closer to the initial screenshot of this article -- with "Unit cell with PO4 polyhedra" still in "picture edit mode" and the thumbnails of the other three tabbed pictures right beneath. You can change edit mode to another picture by simply clicking the tab or clicking the thumbnail. Doing this with "Super cell 2x2x2 with NaS polyhedron" results into this:

Managing a lot of pictures in your document
The thumbnail preview of the structure pictures - basically already available in version 3 - offers now a variety of arrangements as simple tiles (just the thumbnail with the picture title), "content" (atom, bond etc. counts), and "details" with more detailed infos and structure parameters. The thumbnails can be arranged, sorted, grouped, or staggered in various ways and their sizes increased smoothly.

Thumbnails preview
The easiest way to switch from "Picture Edit" mode to "Thumbnails Preview" is to click the left-most symbol in the picture tab bar:

Thumbnails preview is described in the next article: Working with structure picture thumbnails.

Previous article: Picture Edit View and Thumbnails Preview
Next article: Working with structure picture thumbnails