Slicer's User Interface
This page describes the basic structure of Slicer's user interface and introduces some naming conventions for Slicer's buttons and windows.
Slicer's Windows
Slicer opens three windows on the screen. The figure below shows a screenshot from a typical Slicer session.
The "Menu Window" controls most of Slicer's functionalities. Using this window you, e.g., load data, set the contrast and color scheme for the data loaded, and create models of iso-intensity surfaces from your data. The "Viewer Window" visualizes the data. You can also navigate intuitively through the data by dragging the 3D scene and by using the rulers to select specific slices of the volume. The "Message Window" logs your activity. It is not essential and not treated further in this documentation.
The Menu Window
At the top of the Menu window there are 'File', 'View', and 'Help' "submenus". Under the submenus is a group of buttons known as the "main menu". Clicking a button on the main menu will take you to the "panel" associated with that Slicer feature. There are tabs along the top of each panel. The leftmost tab on each panel is the Help for that feature. Clicking the button 'More' in the menu window lists the modules available in your version of Slicer. At present most modules are not of any use to astronomers using Slicer, and they are not discussed any further. The "view selector" allows to control the 3D scene.
The Viewer Window
The Viewer window displays volumes and models. The upper part of the Viewer window shows the "3D scene" and the lower part displays the corresponding 2D "slice views". For radial velocity data cubes with astronomical data the left and middle slice view correspont to position-velocity diagrams. The rightmost slice shows the projection on the sky.
Sometimes particular slice views or the 3D scene alone will be of use. The size of these views can be controlled using the first group of options in the 'view' submenu. This, e.g., allows to only have a single large 3D scene.
Now proceed to reading data.