By using the “Save window as custom tool” and the “Apply custom tool...” options from the File or Signal tools menu, you can save parts of your analysis graphs and reuse them later as your custom tools.


Creating new tools


There are three options for saving a tool:


   Save only one window as a tool with all its properties: For example, if you performed FFT from a signal and changed some FFT properties: smoothing, removing linear trend...., you can save all those settings as a single FFT tool by clicking on the FFT window and selecting the “Save window as custom tool -> Window only...” option from the menu. “Save dialog” appears where you can define a name for your tool file; for example, “MyFFT.swt”. Only the information about the tool type (FFT) and its properties will be saved. Now, you can load any other signal and choose the “Use custom tool>” option from the menu. If you have saved your tool in a default “Sigview” folder, its name will appear in a submenu. Otherwise, select the “From file…” option, find “MyFFT.swt” file and open it. FFT will be performed on your signal, exactly with the properties you saved earlier. The same principle is applicable to all SIGVIEW functions, including 3D analysis and instruments.

   Saving a window and its subtree as a tool: This option is available by using the “Save window as custom tool -> Window and its subtree...” menu option. This option will save the active window and all its child windows as a one tool. For example, you can perform FFT analysis, and then use the “Instruments... Maximum position” function to display dominant frequency from the FFT. If you save the FFT window with its subtree as a new tool, the instrument window will also be saved. If you apply this saved tool to some signal, you will get its FFT with originally saved settings and an instrument showing the maximum value from the FFT. With this option, you can save very complex tools, including dozens of connected windows.

   Saving only a subtree of a currently selected window as a tool: This option is available by using the “Save window as custom tool -> Subtree only...” menu option. It is useful if you have a range of functions you want to apply to one window, for example multiple instruments, but you do not want to save the window itself as a tool.


The default folder for saving and loading custom tools is the “Tools” folder located under the folder where SIGVIEW is installed. After you install SIGVIEW, there are already a few example tools there.


Using tools


When using a custom tool, SIGVIEW will try to check if the tool is applicable to the currently selected window. For example, if you extract a part of some signal between its 5th and 6th second and save that extraction window as a tool, it will not be applicable to the signals that are only 3 seconds in length.


You can also use drag 'n drop to drag SWT files from Windows Explorer and drop them into SIGVIEW. Those will be applied to the currently active SIGVIEW window.


You can also include your custom tools in the SIGVIEW's toolbar and assign them to dedicated toolbar buttons. If you click on the "Settings" button in the "Custom tools" toolbar part, a dialog will open, allowing you to assign a tool (SWT file) to each of 5 custom buttons labelled 1...5.



After you assign a tool to a button, the button will become enabled and allow you to apply the corresponding tool with a single click, instead of searching and opening the SWT file first. A tooltip text on each active toolbar button will display the name of the assigned custom tool file.




Further reading


Also, please see the chapter about Drag 'n Drop in Control Window. It describes some similar alternative functions for reusing parts of the analysis, without first saving those as SWT files.


For more detailed examples on custom tools usage, please see How-To example.