User Guide > Statusbar

Statusbar

Located at the very bottom of the application is the Statusbar, which provides quick access to the following features:

Comment

By clicking the Comment button, a window will open where details about the network can be entered.

View Mode

To highligt certain aspects of the network, different view modes can be selected.

Mode  
Normal No highlight (default)
Flow Highlight the source and show directed links for all paths in the flow (blue color).
gPTP Highlight the Grand Master and show directed links for all master/slave ports in the domain (blue color).
IPDU Highlight the source and show directed links for all flows in the IPDU (blue) and directed links for all the child flows (other colors).
VLAN Highlight the links in the VLAN.

For each view mode, all possible Flow/IPDU/VLAN selections are listed in the menu:

Flow

FRER Flow

Port status
1 FRER Port (bold border)
1 Generate
1 Recovery/Terminate
1 Recovery/Continue

gPTP

Port status
1 Master
1 Slave
1 Passive
1 Disabled

IPDU

VLAN

Edge crossings style

When working with complex networks with numerous connections, there will inevitable be a number of links that overlap in the layout. This can make it hard to grasp exacly how things are connected, especially in sections with large number of links.

These crossings can be visualized using a number of different styles - click on the Edge crossings style button and select an appropiate one.

   
None (default)
Arc up
Arc left
Arc right
Vertical
Horizontal

Fit

By clicking the Fit button, the topology will be redrawn so the whole network fits in the canvas.

Overview

As the topology grows large, the Overivew window can be used to get a minuature picture of the network. Inside this window, a blue area highlights the shown part of the network - you can move this area around to display the desired portion of the network. The overview window can be shown/hidden by toggling the Overview button.

Layout

As you are adding more and more network elements to your topology, you will find that the optimal way to visualize the topology is gradually changing, depending on the number of network elements and the way they are connected to each other. TCN TimeAnalysis contains a number of layout formats. Using these, you can apply different layouts to emphasize relationship patterns of your topology. Some examples of the layout options are:

Symmetric Layout Circular Layout Orthogonal Layout Hierarchical Layout

The rightmost button in the Statusbar displays the current selected layout. By clicking this button, a contextmenu is displayed:

By selecting a new layout type from this menu, the drawing will be reformatted. Advanced algorithms will ensure that space is used efficiently, lengths and crossings of connections are minimized and that no network elements overlap.

The drawing of the topology can be stored and restored across user sessions. This means that you can save the layout of a drawing that you are satisfied with and restore it later if some updates of the drawing did not have the desired effect. This allows you to dynamically explore the best way to visualize your network topology.

To save a layout, select the Save menu item. Enter a filename for the layout XML file and select ‘OK’.

To restore a saved layout, select the Load menu item. Select the layout XML file using the file browser and select ‘OK’.

If any network elements have been deleted since the saving of the layout, these elements will not be restored, it is only the visualization of the elements existing in the topology that are affected by the drawing layout functionality.