Now, return to the startupui dialog. If you have opened any files (choose Quit… from the Data Explorer window's File menu. This is the small window in the top left of your screen with the anchor on the menu bar.)
Click on the Samples… button. You probably expected to be whisked to $DXROOT/dxsamples-x.x but life is never that easy (though this is a requested feature to be added to OpenDX).
You now know how to navigate to a directory using the Open dialog. You just have to know what the directory path is. In Section 1, we discussed how to locate your locally installed /dxsamples-x.x directory and you dutifully found and wrote down that path, right?
You can either use the ".." route (double-click to go up high enough on your file system, then drill down on the path to $DXROOT), or you can save some time by editing the path in the Filter text box. Just be sure to re-append "*.net" so that net files will be shown.
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Depending on your environment, you may be able to use Copy and Paste (mouse clicks) to copy the directory name from a shell window and paste the string into the Filter text box. (First delete the existing Filter string, and remember to re-append "*.net" after Pasting a path). This saves typing and reduces errors. |
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If you were really clever, you ignored me, quit opendx and the startupui, navigated to the dxsamples-x.x directory, restarted opendx, and now are looking at the list of samples in the Open dialog. Clever you! Just remember that you may not want to save files into this directory; you may not even have permission to on your system. |
Using one of these techniques, set the Filter text to point to:
$DXROOT/dxsamples-x.x/*.net
You must substitute the actual path in place of $DXROOT. It's annoying that this variable can't be converted automatically by the system! Another item for the request list. Remember that your particular /dxsamples-x.x will have a version number as part of the directory name; edit it accordingly.
Hit Enter or the Filter button to cause the list to update. Then, scroll down to the /programs directory in the left-hand column and open it using one of the techniques we discussed earlier. Within this directory are a large number of sample programs that illustrate many of the features of Data Explorer. They have also been collected into different categories of similarity (note the capitalized subdirectory names on the left).
