The Concyl GUI consists of a set of three tabbed dialog pages for entering the required input data
and a fourth tab for displaying the solution results. The first page is for the material definitions.
The second page is for the cylinder definitions, and the third page is for the load definitions. The
fourth page displays the solution results. The GUI has built-in error checking for all the required
input parameters. If erroneous input data is detected, then the user must make the necessary
correction before proceeding. The GUI also has context-sensitive help that can be invoked by
pressing the question mark button on the upper right and then placing the question mark cursor
over any GUI element.
Figure 4 below shows the GUI. Click on the figure to display additional information about the
various GUI elements.
Figure 4. Concyl GUI
Once the user has changed any input data, the
results tab will display an asterisk to indicate that a
solution rerun is required. This condition is shown in Figure 4 above. Any time the user clicks on
the results tab a new run will be done, if necessary, and the updated results will be displayed.
Once a successful run has been completed then a variety of other functions can be performed
using the menu system. The Concyl GUI also includes a menu with File, Edit, Tools, and Help menu items. These menus
provide capabilities for loading, saving, editing, and printing the various input and output files. The optimizer and Excel plotting capabilities
are accessed from the Tools menu. Many menu options
are not available and are grayed out until a valid solution has been computed by pressing the
results tab.
