Chapter 3

The Main Menu

File

File contains the usual options that one finds in most Windows programs, as seen in the figure that follows.

These options are now described.

New

As demonstrated in the sample problem, this option is chosen to begin a new problem/file. In some cases you will go directly to the problem creation screen, while in other cases a pop-up menu will appear indicating the submodules that are available. After selecting a submodule you will go to the creation screen.

Open

This is used to open/load a previously saved file. File selection is the standard Windows common dialog type. An example of the screen for opening a file is shown below. Notice that the extension for files in the software system is given by the first three letters of the module name. For example, all transportation files have the extension *.tra. When you go to the open dialog, the default value is for the program to look for files of the type in this module. This can be changed at the bottom left, where it says 'Files of type'. Otherwise, file opening and saving is quite normal. The drive or folder can be changed with the drive/folder drop-down box, a new directory may be created using the new button at the top, details about the files may be seen by using the details button at the top right.

It is possible to use Help, User information to set the program to automatically solve any problem when it gets loaded. This way if you like you can be looking at the solution screen whenever you load a problem rather than the data screen.

Save

Save will replace the file without asking you if you care about overwriting the previous version of this file. If you try to save and have not previously named the file, you will be asked to name this file.

The names that are legal are standard Windows 95 file names. In addition to the file name, you may preface the name with a drive letter (with its colon) or path designation. The software will automatically append an extension to the name that you use. As mentioned above, the extension is the first three letters of the module name. You may type file names in as uppercase, lowercase, or mixed. Examples of legal file names are

sample, sample.tra , c:myFile , c:\ myCourse \test, and myproblem.example .

If you enter sample.tra and the module is not transportation then an extension will be added. For example, if the module is linear programming then the name under which the file will be saved will be sample.tra.lin .

Save as

Save as will prompt you for a file name before saving. This option is very similar to the option to load a data file. When you choose this option, the Windows Common Dialog Box for Files will appear. It is essentially identical to the one previously shown.

Save as Excel file

The software has an option that allows you to save many (but not all) of the problems as Excel files. The data is transported to Excel and the spreadsheet is filled with formulas for the solutions. In some cases, Excel's Solver may be required in order to get the solution.

For example, given below is the output from a waiting line model. The left hand side has the data while the right hand side has the solution.

After saving as an Excel file, the Excel file appears below. Notice from the formula for cell E7 (shown at the top of the spreadsheet) that a spreadsheet with formulas was created. That is, we did not 'cut and paste' the above screen into Excel (which is possible) but instead created an Excel spreadsheet with formulas to derive the answers.

Save as HTML file

Any table, either data or solution, may be saved as an HTML file as shown below.

If more than one table is on the screen at the time that this option is selected, then the active table is the one that is saved. We formatted the output table and then saved it as HTML. This, of course, looks much better in color.

Print

Print will display a Print Setup screen. Printing options are described in Chapter 4. Both Save and Print will act slightly differently if a graph is being displayed at the time that you use Print or Save.

Print Screen

This will print the screen as it appears. Different screen resolutions may affect the printing. It generally works perfectly for 640 by 480 and 800 by 600. Printing the screen is more time consuming than a regular print.

Solve

There are several ways to solve a problem. Clicking on File, Solve is probably the least efficient way to solve the problem. The toolbar icon may be used, as well as the [ F9 ] key. Also, if the data is entered in order (top to bottom, left to right, using [Enter]), the program will solve the problem automatically after the last cell.

After solving, the Solve option will change to an Edit option on both the menu and the toolbar . This is the way to go back and forth between data and solutions. Note that Help, User information may be used to set the program to automatically maximize the solution windows if so desired.

Exit

The next option on the File menu is Exit. This will exit the program.

Last Four Files

The File menu contains a list of the last four files that you have used. Clicking on one of these will load the file.

Edit

The commands under Edit can be seen in the following illustration. Their purposes are threefold. The first four commands are used to insert or delete rows or columns. The second type of command is useful for repeating entries in a column, and the third type is for cutting and pasting between Windows applications. It is also possible to enable the insert/delete and copy options by right clicking on the data or solution table.

Insert row will insert a row after the current row and Insert column will insert a column after the current column. Delete row will delete the current row and Delete column will delete the current column.

Copy Entry Down Column

This command is used to copy an entry from one cell to all cells below it in the column. This is not often useful, but when it is it can save a great deal of work.

Copy

Copy has three options available. It is possible to copy the entire table, the current row, or the current column to the clipboard. It is possible to copy from the data table or any of the solution tables. Whatever is copied can then be pasted into this program or some other Windows program. (The copy tool in the toolbar copies the entire table.) If you are at the solution stage, the copying will be for the table that is active.

Paste

Paste is used to paste in the current contents of the clipboard. When pasting into DS for Windows, the pasting begins at the current cursor position. Thus, it is possible to copy a column to a different column beginning in a different row. This could be done to create a diagonal. It is not possible to paste into a solution table, although as indicated previously it is possible to copy from a solution table.

View

View has several options that enable you to customize the appearance of the screen.

The Toolbars menu contains two options. The toolbar can be customized (as can most Windows toolbars ) or the toolbar can be reset to its original look.

The Instruction bar can be displayed at its default location in the extra data panel or above the data, or below the data, or as a floating window, or not at all. The Status Bar display can be toggled on or off.

Full screen will turn all of the bars ( toolbar , command bar, instruction and status bar) on or off.

Zoom will generate a small form allowing you to reduce or increase the size of the columns. It is easier to use the zoom tool on the standard toolbar .

Colors can be set to Monochrome (black and white) or from this state to their Original colors. This formerly was very useful when overhead devices displayed much better in monochrome than in color. Today, the projectors are so powerful that monchrome is generally not required.

Module

A drop-down list with all of the modules in alphabetical order will appear. The MODULE tool
on the utility toolbar below the data area is a second way to get a list of modules.

Format

Format has several options for the display of data and solution tables, as can be seen in the following illustration. In addition, there are some additional format options available in the format toolbar .

Colors

The colors for all of the displays can be set. There are five tabs as shown below. These options will create permanent changes whereas the foreground and background tools on the format bar will change only the current table. Furthermore, the color settings are for the entire table while the format tools may be used for either the entire table or for selected columns.

The first tab is for setting the colors in the data table and the second tab is for setting the colors in the solution tables. That is, it is possible to have the displays of the data and the display of the results appear different, which can be helpful. For either the data or the results you may set the background and foreground colors for rows to alternate by using the odd and even options. This makes reading the tables easier.

In order to set the colors, first select the table property that you want to set, then select foreground or background if applicable, then select rows if applicable and then click on the color. For example, click on Body, Foreground, Odd and then click on the red color box and the foreground for every other row will become red. The changes here will be maintained throughout until you return to this screen and reset the colors. If you want to make changes in only one table for one problem then it may be easier to use the toolbar options for foreground and background . Also, the foreground and background color selection tools, as well as the bold, italic and underline tools may be used on individual columns if you select these columns before pressing on the tool.

The third tab allows you to customize the colors in the panels (status, instruction). The fourth tab can be used to set the gradient that appears on several of the screens (problem creation, empty data screen) and the fifth tab allows you to reset the colors to their original (factory) settings.

Other format options

The font type, style and size for all tables can be set. Zeros can be set to display as blanks rather than zeros in the data table. The grid line display can be set to horizontal, vertical, both or none. There are four gridline styles available. The problem title that appears in the data table and was created at the creation screen can be changed .

In order to give some idea of the extensive formatting capabilities available we display a sample of an overly formatted screen. Unfortunately, the colors will not appear in the display below.

In order to create this screen we used Format, Colors and changed the background and foreground colors of odd rows to give us the alternating rows. We also went to the panels tab and changed the status panel background to a dark color and the foreground to a light color. After this we selected the column named 'Mort' and used the background and foreground tools on the toolbar to reset the colors for this column only, then we selected 'Bruce' and 'Beth' and used the Bold and Italic tools on the toolbar and finally we selected 'Brian' and used the center align tool on the toolbar .

Returning to the Format menu observe that the table can be squeezed or expanded . That is, the column widths can be decreased or increased. Each press of the tool changes the column widths by 10%. This is very useful when tables are wider than the screen. The toolbar has the zoom option which will accomplish the same thing.

NOTE: All tables can have their column widths changed by clicking on the line separating the columns and dragging the column divider left or right!

The input can be checked or not. It is a good idea to always check the input but not checking the input allows you to put entries into cells that otherwise could not be put there.

The last option of insert/delete will take you to the Edit menu.

Tools

A Calculator is available for simple calculations, including square root. Numbers may be copied from the calculator and pasted into an individual cell in the data table. A Normal distribution calculator is available for performing calculations related to the normal distribution. This is particularly useful for forecasting and project management. See the Help screen for information on how to use the normal distribution calculator, or use the happy face on the calculator to get step-by-step instructions. An example of the Normal calculator appears in Chapter 6 in the section on project management.

There is an area available to Annotate problems. If you want to write a note to yourself about the problem, select annotation. The note will be saved with the file if you save the file. An example of annotation appears in Chapter 1. In order to eliminate the annotation completely, the box must be blank (by deleting) and then the file must be resaved . The last option will allow you to convert (almost) any DS for Windows file, not just the current file, to Excel.

Window

A sample of the Window options appears in the next illustration. This menu option is enabled only at the solution screen. Notice that in this example there are five different output screens that can be viewed. The number of windows depends on the specific module and problem.

Help

The Help options are displayed next. The third option, Topic, will give a description of the module, the data required for input, the output results, and the options available in the module. It is worthwhile to look at this screen at least one time in order to be certain that there are no unsuspected differences between your assumptions and the assumptions of the program. If there is anything to be warned about regarding the option, it will appear on the help screen as well as in this manual.

Tip of the day

The Tip of the day will be displayed. From this, it will be possible to set the tip to display all of the time or not to.

E-mail

This will use your e-mail to set up a message to be sent to Prentice Hall. The first step is to click on the main body of the message and then to paste (CTRL-V or SHIFT-INS) the information that the program has created into the body of the mail.

The next three options point you to the Prentice-Hall web site for general support of the software, the location of a web version of this manual and the location for the upgrade of this program.

User Information

The first tab can be used to change the name of the course, instructor or school, or associated textbook. The student name is set at the time of installation of the software and cannot be changed.

The second tab is used to set several of the options that have been discussed to this point.

About DS for Windows

Notice the build number (build 9) after the version number. If you send e-mail requesting help please be sure to include this build number. Also, notice the web site location - www.prenhall.com /weiss. This site contains upgrades!