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Teamcenter Visualization 11.2 Introduces a New Look and Feel

By Martin Goeggelmann

Teamcenter Visualization 11.2 introduces a new, ribbon based, look and feel that is very easy to use and fully customizable to your specific needs. Let me take you on a tour of the new user interface and its key concepts.

Start Page

The first thing you will see when you start the Teamcenter Visualization, is the new start page. From this page, you can quickly access brief explanations of key features and concepts of the new user interface. If you need more details beyond these brief information, you can also quickly access the Help repository from this page.

Teamcenter Visualization Start Page

If desired, you can display a custom announcement on the start page. The appropriate HTML page that you can customize, for each service level and language, can be found in the Teamcenter Visualization install-directory, in the etc/background directory.      

Teamcenter Visualization Custom Announcements

Docking Windows

With Teamcenter Visualization 11.2 you have more flexibility in where you can place docking windows within the application. Simply select one of the docking windows (in this example the info browser window), drag it to the desired area and drop it on top of one of the arrows along the edges.

Teamcenter Visualization Docking Windows

Application Toolbar

Teamcenter Visualization Toolbar

The application toolbar can be found just above the graphics window. It contains the most commonly used commands that you can quickly access, for example, the 3D selection filters can be found here and they are not exposed anywhere else in the UI.

Vertical Tab Groups

The assembly workspace tabs are now grouped vertically on the left side of the application. Their basic behavior is still the same, but the icons have been refreshed to align with the new UI look and feel.

Teamcenter Visualization Vertical Tab Groups

Customizable Ribbons

The new ribbon user interface can easily be customized to fit your needs. You can:


  • Customize existing ribbons tabs

  • Create new ribbon tabs

  • Create your own keyboard shortcuts

The main customization menu is accessible by right-clicking on the ribbon area. There, you‘ll find two main customization options. First is the option to edit the Quick Access Toolbar and second is the “Customize the Ribbon“ function, which allows you to modify the default ribbons.

Let’s walk through some examples so you can see how you can change the existing ribbons and add new ribbons.

Teamcenter Visualization Customize Ribbon


 


Edit existing ribbon tab

Teamcenter Visualization Edit Ribbon

To edit an existing ribbon, first, you need to activate the “Customize Ribbon“ UI as discussed above. In this example we’re changing the “Home“ ribbon tab by removing an existing block and adding a new one.


  • Select the “Home” tab in the “Customize the Ribbon“ list then expand the structure below the “Home“ tab to see a list of its relevant feature blocks

  • Remove the “Visual Report“ feature block from the “Home“ tab by selecting the “Visual Report“ block and clicking the Remove button

  • Now, let’s add the “Navigation“ block to the Home Ribbon. Select the “Navigation” block in the “Choose Commands from:” list, underneath the View(3D) tab, then simply click the “Add” button to add it to the Home ribbon.


As you can see in the picture above on the right, the Navigation block has been added to the Home tab. You can also reorder the various feature blocks within the tab by using the up and down arrows as needed.

Add a new ribbon tab

Teamcenter Visualization Add Ribbon Tab


  • Now, let’s create a new ribbon tab called “My Tab“

  • First, click the “New Tab“ button and assign a meaningful name for the new tab. You can see in the above picture on the left that a new tab has been created

  • Now you can add any existing function groups or add your own groups in the same way as described in the previous example


 


Create keyboard shortcuts

Teamcenter Visualization Keyboard Shortcut

In Teamcenter Visualization 11.2 you can also create new keyboard shortcuts to quickly access a key functionality.


  • From the “Customize Ribbon“ UI, click the “Keyboard shortcuts: Customize” button

  • The customize keyboard dialog will come up and you can browse to the function you want to assign a shortcut to. For your convenience, all features are grouped by ribbon tab categories. Once you found the right command, select it and assign a shortcut to it (in the example above, we assigned “ E” to the Export function

  • Finally click the “Assign” button

Now you can click Ctrl+E on your keyboard to bring up the Export dialog.


 


Legacy Menu Structure

Last, but not least, the first button on the left side of the application toolbar gives you access to the menu structure of the classic user interface. We provide this to help make the transition easier for you and other existing users who are familiar with the structure of the classic UI.

Teamcenter Visualization Classic Menu

I hope this quick tour gives you a good overview of the new Teamcenter Visualization UI. Upgrade to Teamcenter Visualization 11.2 today to take advantage of the new UI and increase your productivity.

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This article first appeared on the Siemens Digital Industries Software blog at https://blogs.sw.siemens.com/teamcenter/teamcenter-visualization-11-2-introduces-a-new-look-and-feel/