The Preferences dialog is opened from the push button on the toolbar. The Preferences dialog contains a number of general-purpose and supplemental features, including the pan options, slide show pause interval, x-cursors default properties, animation default settings, stability diagram colors and symbols, and the pick poles cursor tolerance.
Pan Options – Select the default axes panning behavior, which can be horizontal, vertical, or unconstrained panning.
Slide Show Pause Interval – Enter the pause interval in seconds for the plotting slide show. The automatically incremented slide show plotting pauses for this time interval between plots.
Cursors – Select the default properties for x-cursors added to the plot axes. These properties include the color, marker symbol and fill, line type, and display of the x/y position text. If 'custom' is selected for the color, a color selection dialog is presented.
Animation – Select or enter some of the default settings for the IMAT animator. Menus on the animator figure allow changing these defaults during animation. See the help documentation on the imat_shp\plot function for more detailed information on these parameters.
Select the Deformed Geometry line type and node marker.
Select the Deformed Colors of the elements to be either as defined in the test display model or based on the shape magnitude. If 'magnitude' is selected, the element colors can be either 'static' or 'dynamic'. For the 'dynamic' option, the colors are recalculated during animation. Also select the X, Y, and Z components of the shapes magnitude that are included in the deformed color calculation.
Select the Undeformed Geometry and ID Lines display to be on or off.
Select the Complex Shapes display method, where 'amp' is signed amplitude.
Enter a numeric value for the Scale Factor, which is applied to the preset scale factor for the deformed geometry.
Select the axes View to be the default isometric view (-37.5, 30) or one of the 2-dimensional views, or enter the azimuth (horizontal rotation) and (vertical) elevation view angles in degrees.
Select the Reverse Axis to reverse the directions of a pair of axes.
Select the Display Axes to set the display of the animation plot axes to be on or off.
Select the Background color of the animation figure and plot axes to be white or black. The text color for the ID lines and axes is the inverse of the background color.
Select the AVI Compression method for creating AVI files of the animation display.
Plot Stability – Select the color and symbol of the pole markers for the Pole & Vector, Pole, Frequency, None, Neg(ative) Damping, and Out of Band stability conditions plotted on the stability diagram. Select the color of the MIF and Synth(esized) FRF plotted on the stability diagram.
Pick Poles Cursor Tolerance – Enter a numeric value for the tolerance of the pick poles cursor, which determines how close the cursor must be to a pole marker to highlight it. This tolerance is somewhat proportional to the diameter of the open area at the center of the cursor cross-hairs. Enter the tolerance value as infinity (Inf) to highlight the closest pole marker regardless of its distance from the cursor.