3.1  Starting to use Catalyzer

When you first start Catalyzer, you will see the Quick Start screen, outlined in the first section. This presents a number of common start points for creating a catalog, including creating a new catalog, and creating catalog of data you already have on your hard disk.

Creating a new empty catalog from the main menu

Creating a new empty catalog from the toolbar

The first time you run Catalyzer it will operate in Lite Mode. This lets you edit and save small catalogs. For full functionality you need a license, available from Axiope. See Licensing Catalyzer and Plugins for details.

The figure below shows the main catalog window:

Catalog Window with empty catalog

The second row in the image is the main toolbar. It has buttons for the following functions:
New Catalog creates a new catalog
Quickstart launches the Quickstart window
Open Catalog displays a file browser for you to browse to a catalog and open it
Save Catalog saves the currently opened catalog
Undo undoes the last thing you did
Redo cancels the last undo
Previous views the previous record in a list
Next views the next record in a list
Catalog Window displays the Catalog window
Class Window displays the Class window

The main area is the Record panel. This displays the values in the selected record.

To the left of the window is the Catalog tree panel. This displays the record hierarchy in a tree view. Use this panel to select a record to display in the Class/Record panel. You can add, delete, duplicate and change the order of records using the buttons at the top of this panel.

Navigating in Catalyzer

The toolbar gives you access to the main features in Catalyzer. You can also use the File menu to open and save catalogs. Use the Catalog Window and Class Window buttons to display the main editing windows. See the next section, Creating Catalogs for more information on the Class window.

Keyboard shortcuts

You can also use keyboard navigation to move around in Catalyzer. The most important keyboard shortcuts are:

• TAB: use this key to take you to the next field
• RETURN: use this key to add options to a list, and to select or deselect checkboxes. You can also use this key to add fields to a class.
• CTRL-C and CTRL-V (Windows, Linux) or Command-C and Command-V (Mac OS): use these keys to copy and paste items
• ARROW keys: use these to move around in a list or table.

There are shortcuts for most functions that are available from menus in Catalyzer. The shortcut is indicated to the right of the item's name in the menu. For example, the first item in the File menu is New, and its keyboard shortcut is shown as "CTRL-N".