Introducing Power Painter Options and Palettes

In this section:

The following image is an example of the Power Painter tool with multiple objects displayed in the canvas. Several options and palettes enable you to customize the layout for the Power Painter tool. For details, see Customizing the Power Painter Environment.

Power Painter

The following options are available in Power Painter:

Menu bar

Standard browser menu bar options such as File, View, Tools, and others.

Toolbar

Power Painter toolbar options such as Layout, Run, View, Alignment, Palettes, and others.

Canvas

The canvas where you drop objects and paint the reporting document. The reporting document can be made up of text elements, images, tabular report objects, charts, and lines.

The following palettes are available in Power Painter:

Toolbox palette

Contains the tabular report, chart, text, image, and line objects for painting your document.

Query palette

Enables you to build and customize queries for tabular reports and charts.

Data Sources palette

Contains your Data Source information.

Properties palette

Contains the property settings for the objects in the canvas.
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Using Palettes in the Canvas

How to:

Upon opening the Power Painter tool, the canvas appears with all of the palettes minimized and pinned in the Power Painter margins. You can show, hide, or move these palettes as needed. Power Painter retains these settings.

Power Painter is able to store information so that the options you set in a single session are remembered and applied the next time you use the tool. Examples of the settings that can be saved are how the palettes are displayed, the theme selected, field display options, and others. The information for these settings is stored under each user directory in the Managed Reporting repository.

Note: Reusing stored settings is only available if you access the same Managed Reporting environment.

Palettes in Power Painter are:
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Procedure: How to Dock and Undock a Palette
  1. Double-click a palette to dock it on the canvas.

    or

    Drag a palette within 10 pixels of the edge (top, bottom, left, right) of the canvas.

    Note: A palette is docked when both the pin and close button are available from the palette toolbar.

    Report properties

  2. To undock a palette (float it), click the palette toolbar, left-click and hold your mouse, and drag the palette to a new location on the canvas.
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Procedure: How to Stack Palettes

Drag and dock multiple palettes to one side of the canvas to create vertical or stacked palettes. You can adjust the height/width of each palette in the docking area.

Note: Resizing any palette automatically resizes the rest of the palettes so that they can fit into the docking area.

The following image is an example of vertically stacked palettes in the Power Painter tool.

stacked palettes

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Procedure: How to Pin a Palette
  1. Click the pin pin button button located on the toolbar of an open palette.

    The palette is pinned and minimized, as shown in the following image.

    palette pinned

  2. You can perform the following actions with pinned palettes:
    • Hover your mouse over the palette to show its contents.
    • Hover your mouse out of the palette to minimize it again.
    • Double-click a palette to dock it on the canvas.
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Procedure: How to Show a Palette
  1. Select Palettes from the View menu.

    Palettes that are checked are shown in the canvas.

  2. Select an unchecked palette name.

    The palette is shown maximized on the canvas. You can move or resize the palette as needed.
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Procedure: How to Close a Palette
  1. Select Palettes from the View menu.
  2. Select a checked palette name from the list.

    The palette is closed and removed from the canvas.

Note: You can also close an open palette by clicking the Close Close button button from the palette toolbar.
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Procedure: How to Reset the Power Painter Layout

From the View menu, select Reset Layout from the Palettes submenu, as shown in the following image.

Reset Layout

The Power Painter layout resets with the default palettes shown (Toolbox, Properties, Data Sources) in the canvas.

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