Left Sidebar

The Left Sidebar in Turtle Tracer is a highly customizable, scalable panel designed to keep your most essential tools and settings right at your fingertips. It provides quick access to frequently used actions, allowing you to streamline your path-planning workflow.

Overview

The sidebar is located on the left side of the screen and offers several user-friendly features:

• Expandable & Collapsible: You can toggle the sidebar to view full labels or collapse it to just show icons.
• Scalable: Drag the right edge of the sidebar to resize it to your expanded preferred width.

Built-in Items

By default, the sidebar houses a variety of built-in tools and actions, including but not limited to:

• File Manager: Quickly access and manage your project files.
• Draw Path: Toggle the draw tool to quickly sketch out paths.
• Grid & Snap: Toggle the grid overlay and snap-to-grid functionality.
• Onion Skin: Visualize previous robot positions along the path.
• Ruler & Protractor: Tools for precise measurement of distance and angles.
• Undo / Redo / History: Easily navigate through your recent changes.

Customization via Settings

Turtle Tracer allows you to fully customize what appears in the Left Sidebar to suit your specific needs.

To customize the sidebar:

1. Open the Settings menu.
2. Navigate to the Sidebar tab.

From here, you can:

• Reorder Tools: Drag and drop items in the “Active Tools” list to change their order in the sidebar.
• Add / Remove Built-in Tools: Move items between the “Active Tools” list and the “Available Tools” list.
• Adjust Icon Scale: Use the slider to increase or decrease the size of the icons in the sidebar.

Adding Custom Buttons

One of the most powerful features of the Left Sidebar is the ability to add your own custom buttons linked to any action in the Command Palette.

To add a custom button:

1. Open the Settings menu and go to the Sidebar tab.
2. Scroll down to the Custom Tools section and click the Add Custom Tool button.
3. In the dialog that appears:
   • Search for a Command: Use the search bar to find any action available in the Command Palette (e.g., “Export as JSON”, “Toggle Theme”, “Reset Animation”).
   • Choose a Label: Enter the text you want to appear next to the button when the sidebar is expanded.
   • Select an Icon: Browse and select an icon that best represents your custom tool.
4. Click Create Tool.

Your new custom button will appear in the sidebar, ready to execute your command whenever!