3. The Main Window

When you launch Contours you land on the main window. It has five regions: a title bar, a menu strip, a central chart area, a right-hand panel with tabs, and a status bar along the bottom.

Figure 1. The Contours main window. (1) Title bar and menu; (2) chart area with position traces, one colour per axis; (3) right-hand tabs — Shows, Test, Axes; (4) Shows tree view and property grid; (5) status bar with project, joystick, and connection state.

Title bar

The window title always shows the name of the open project. When nothing is open, you will see just Contours.

Menus

The menu strip at the top contains three groups:

Project — New, Open, Save, Save As, Save Backup, a Recent Projects submenu, and User Settings.
Connections — Manage Connections and Refresh Connections.
About — version information plus links to documentation and support.

The Myostat logo to the left of the menu is clickable and opens the Myostat website in your default browser.

Right-panel tabs

The right side of the window is a tabbed panel with three tabs. These are where almost all of your editing happens:

Shows — tree view of every show and its profiles; create, delete, record, edit, and run shows here.
Axes — list of axes with a property grid for the selected axis; add and configure motors here.
Test — pick a show, choose which profiles to include, and run it in test mode.

Chart area

The large panel in the centre plots position, speed, and torque over time. Every axis gets its own colour. You can toggle which series are visible from the chart's side panel, and right-click on the chart (while editing) to insert or delete data points at the cursor.

Status bar

The bar along the bottom of the window shows live status:

The name of the current project, selected show, and selected profile.
The acquired joystick, if one is connected (Joystick Acquired: <name>).
The connection search status (Searching, Found, Idle).
A Connect All Axes checkbox that shows partial/full/none connection state across the project.