You may wish to create a shortcut or alias for future use.

You should rather quickly see a small dialog box called the "startupui" ("ui" usually stands for user interface) along with the DX logo (which generally disappears by itself in a few more seconds).

"Startupui" dialog box

This launch pad dialog gives you handy entry points into various aspects of OpenDX. Let me briefly describe the choices. If you do hit the buttons, you can always back out by choosing Quit… from the File Menu in the windows that open.

• Import Data … invokes the DX Data Prompter. This is a utility program designed to help you describe simpler data sets so that you can then import them and start visualizing them. We'll do an exercise using Prompter later in the workshop.

• Run Visual Programs … is a quick way to find and run visual programs (nets) that you've written previously or received from a colleague. This starts DX in a way that doesn't show the Visual Programming Editor (VPE) because it assumes you want to run, not edit, the program. Many of the Samples are set up in this way.

• Edit Visual Programs … is the quick way to open the Editor along with a selected program so you can make modifications to it.

• New Visual Program … is the quick way to open the Editor to a blank canvas to begin creating a new program.

• Run Tutorial … will launch the built-in tutorial (remember the /tutorial directory?). Feel free to do this at any time, though you may find it more useful after you work through my "guided tour" of the Samples and do some of the hands-on exercises I've created for this workshop. We will be using some of the same exercises and data in this workshop, presenting them in a similar manner but offering more detailed discussion as we work through them. Be aware that the tutorial has not been updated for some time, so some files may have changed name or been moved. This could be frustrating since you are just getting started. In a later section, I'll work through the Tutorial with you, noting things that are obviously changed, incorrect, or missing to help you through it.

• Samples … will let you dive right into playing with the sample programs, though you must know where they are installed on your system (if you set the environment variable, you now know where they are). We'll explore the Samples together shortly.

• Help … reiterates everything I just told you, and Quit does what it says.