I have to say that the Inventor interface is not very friendly. Compared to the programming interface of MINDSTORMS it is confusing and not easy to understand. One of the first things when you go to Inventor is the strange layout on screen:
Note how the inventor screen is made up of three windows, the bottom left window is where all the components can be linked and the far right window contains all the functions available. One of the strange parts of this is that the tools menu does open at startup. This menu is required to do any of the programming for the RCX. This can be opened by going to Window on the file menu and selecting "Show tools menu". The function window at the side can also be altered to contain more tools such as looping and more sensors. This can be done by going to Project on the file menu and selecting "Change Level". This will open the following window:
You can select the level of tools you wish to use. This is some attempt by the writers of ROBOLAB to simplify the programming for different difficulty levels, but I feel it makes some of the more interesting features more hidden. If you select level 4 all the tools are available:
The Aqua blue tools at the bottom of the window allow you to achieve some of the more interesting features of the RCX. Created by D. Brown |
