Overview of Menus
All functions of Torchmate CAD/CAM are accessed from the main screen. The largest feature of the main screen is the work area; this section contains a gridded work area that is skirted by a material blank. The main work area is where all drawing will be done. Around the work area are various tool bars that contain all of the tools, shortcuts, and options for creating a drawing.
Rulers: The rulers sit on either side of the work area and provide a reference to the coordinates of a spot in the work area.
Layer Color Pallet: This bar allows the color of an object to be changed; this is useful in keeping track of various parts. The color of an object does not affect the cutting process at all and in most cases this is an unused tab. Colors can be changed by double clicking on one of the colors, this opens a window to change the color options.
Sheet Layer: The sheet layer is a guide used to differentiate multiple sheets of multiple objects. This bar like the ‘Layer Color Pallet’ does not affect the cutting process and is generally unused. The sheet layer is visible when ‘Show Fill’ is enabled in the ‘View’ menu, by default it is transparent.
Sheet Selection: This option is used to toggle between multiple sheets. Multiple sheets occur when nesting or other options that will create additional sheets. This option enables these sheets to be paged through if multiple sheets exist.
Shortcut Bar: The shortcut bar contains icons that serve the same function as certain options in the program menus. Generally these options are for selections that are used frequently. This menu can be customized by going to View > Toolbars > Customize various functions can be added or removed from the bar.
Information Bar: The information bar contains basic information about a selected object. This bar contains two main areas, the objects tab and the variable tab. The objects tab gives two bits of information, the coordinates of the pointer in the grid and how many and what type of objects are selected. This bar is useful when determining what is selected and also if what is selected is the correct object. The variable tab is a dynamic bar that will change with each tool and part selected. This bar displays options for various tools when they are selected.
Tool Pallet: The bar on the left hand side of Torchmate CAD/CAM contains the pull out menus for basic drawing tools as well as the means to manipulate them.
