Globally Resetting the Images of Multiple Elements

In some situations, you may wish to reset the images for all elements in a model (or in a particular Container) to a custom image or (if they have already been customized) back to the default symbol. You can accomplish this by selecting Graphics|Change Symbols… from the main menu, which will display a dialog for globally changing and resizing symbols.

Within this dialog, you first select whether you wish to Change Symbol and/or Change Symbol Size for the selected elements.  When changing a symbol, you can either revert the selected elements to the original (default) symbol (assuming you have previously modified the symbols in some manner), or you can select a user-defined symbol.

If you wish to change the symbol to a user-defined symbol, the file must be an enhanced Windows metafile (.emf).  GoldSim utilizes enhanced metafiles for element symbols because they are vector graphics (and therefore scale without losing image quality). Most advanced graphics programs can create enhanced metafiles (or convert other formats to an enhanced metafile). Note, however, that unless you create the original image as an enhanced metafile, it will not be a true vector graphic and will lose image quality when scaling.

When changing the symbol size, you can choose to either scale the image to a Percent of Default (a fraction of the element’s default image size) or directly specify the Pixel Width (the width of the image in pixels).

After specifying the type of change you wish to make, you must specify the scope of the changes (i.e., what elements the changes will be applied to). The Scope of changes drop-down list has up to four options:

   Selected elements only:  Only the elements that have been selected (prior to opening the dialog) are modified.  This option is only available if one or more elements have actually been selected.

   Current container only:  Only the elements in the current Container (but not any elements in any child Containers) are modified.

   Current container only + children:  Only the elements in the current Container (and any elements in child Containers) are modified. This option is only available if you are inside a Container that contains other Containers.

   Entire model:  All elements in the model are modified.

The scope of the changes can be further refined by specifying the specific element types to which the modification will be applied.  This is done by checking or clearing the boxes next to each element type in the Element types affected portion of the dialog.

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