This section is designed to highlight one or two features per issue that may be overlooked because they are not made visually obvious with an icon or a menu item.
Rubberbanding
If you've ever tried to clean up a messy schematic, or add a section of circuitry between two closely spaced sections, you'll understand the value of rubberbanding. It lets you drag a section of circuitry while maintaining the nodal connections. Rubberbanding mode is toggled on and off from Preferences / Common Options / Circuit / Rubberbanding.
Inevitably, when using the feature, you reach a point where you want to move a block of circuitry without dragging the lines. To do this you turn rubberbanding off. But its a pain to navigate through the menus to do so. Well, there's no need to. SHIFT+CTRL+R will toggle the rubbberbanding state from On to Off or from Off to On.
One further tip, when using ruberbanding mode, is to define a box region and then drag it, as opposed to dragging individual parts. This avoids diagonal wires.
Status Bar Display
If the Status Bar display is enabled (Options menu / Status Bar), moving the mouse cursor over a component will show useful information about the part, like its name, type, its most recent time-domain current and power terms and its condition (On, Off, Sat, Lin, etc.)
Attribute dialog box Plot command
If you haven't yet used the Micro-Cap 7 ADB Plot option, you're missing a good thing. It makes a plot of the part's characteristic curve. This is particularly useful for waveform sources. The plot dynamically responds as you change the source parameters, so you can see their effect immediately. Its useful for other primitives as well, like diodes, NPNs, and other active devices. It lets you visualize and appreciate the impact their parameters have on the principle characteristic curves.
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