Setup Panel of a 2D Display

Changes to the kind of display of the network can be performed in the Setup panel. All settings become valid only after the button is clicked. The whole display window is then redrawn.

  
Figure: Setup Panel of a 2D-display.

 
1. Buttons to control the display of unit information: The first two lines of the Setup panel ( units top and units bottom) contain two buttons each to set the unit parameter that can be displayed at the top resp. the bottom of the unit.

   The button toggles the display of information which can be selected with the button . The unit name, unit number, or the z-value (3D coordinate) can be displayed above the unit, the activation, initial activation, bias, or output of the unit below the unit. The numerical attribute selected with the button at the bottom of the unit (activation, initial activation, output, or bias) also determines the size of the unit in the graphical representation.

   It is usually not advisable to switch off top (number or name), because this information is needed for reference to the info panel. An unnamed unit is always displayed with its number.

    

2. Buttons to control the display of link information: The third line consists of three buttons to select the display of link data, , , .
   • determines whether to draw links at all (then is inverted),
   • displays link weights at the center of the line representing the link,
   • displays arrow heads of the links pointing from source to target unit.

    

3. invokes another popup window to select the display of up to eight different layers in the display window. Layers are being stacked like transparent sheets of paper and allow for a selective display of units and links. These layers need NOT correspond with layers of units of the network topology (as in multilayer feed-forward networks), but they may do so. Layers are very useful to display only a selected subset of the network. The display of each layer can be switched on or off independently. A unit may belong to several layers at the same time. The assignment of units to layers can be done with the menu assign layers invoked with the button OPTIONS in the main Info panel.

    

4. sets the 2D--display colors. On monochrome terminals, black on white or white on black representation of the network can be selected from a popup menu. On color displays, a color editing window is opened. This window consists of three parts: The palette of available colors at the top, the buttons to select the item to be colored in the lower left region, and the color preview window in the lower right region.

    
   Figure: Color Setup Panel.
   

   A color is set by clicking first at the appropriate button (, , or ) and then at the desired color in the color palette. The selected setting is immediately displayed in the color preview window. All colors may be set in any order and any number of times. The changes become effective in the corresponding 2D--display only after both the setup panel and the color edit panel have been dismissed with the button.

    

5. Sliders for the selection of link display parameters, links positive and links negative:

   There are two slidebars to set thresholds for the display of links. When the bubble is moved, the current threshold is displayed in absolute and relative value at the bottom of the setup panel. Only those links with an absolute value above the threshold are displayed. The range of the absolute values is (see also paragraph ). The trigger values can be set independently for positive and negative weights. With these link thresholds the user can concentrate on the strong connections. Reducing the number of links drawn is an effective means to speed up the drawing of the displays, since line drawing takes most of the time to display a network.

   Note: The links that are not drawn are only invisible. They still remain accessible, i.e. they are affected by editor operations.

    

6. units scale: This slidebar sets the parameter scaleFactor for the size of the growing boxes of the units. Its range is . A scale factor of draws the unit with activation with full size. A scale factor of draws a unit with activation only with half size.

    

7. grid width: This value sets the width of the grid on which the units are placed. For some nets, changing the default of 37 pixels may be useful, e.g. to be able to better position the units in a geometrical pattern. Overlapping tops and bottoms occur if a grid size of less than 35 pixels is selected (26 pixels if units are displayed without numerical values). This overlap, however, does not affect computation in any way.

    

8. origin (grid): These two fields determine the origin of the window, i.e. the grid position of the top left corner. There, the left field represents the x coordinate, the right is the y coordinate. The origin is usually (0, 0). Setting it to (20, 0) moves the display 20 units to the right and 10 units down in the grid.

    

9. subnet number: This field adjusts the subnet number to be displayed in this window. Values between -32736 and +32735 are possible here.