Microstran's menu, toolbars, and output window are actually control bars, which may be docked on an edge of the Microstran main window or floated anywhere on the desktop, either inside or outside the main window. Click and drag on an edge of a control bar to reposition it and double-click on the title bar of any floating control bar to make it go back where it came from. If you drag a control bar off the Microstran window and reboot with different screen resolution you may not see it. Toolbars may be reset one at a time by clicking the Reset button in the Toolbars dialog box (View > Toolbars command). They are also reset when Microstran's configuration is reset (see below).
Microstran is configured initially so that the main toolbars fit on an 800x600 screen. There are additional toolbars and buttons you can display if you have a screen bigger than 800x600. Even with an 800x600 screen you can still display extra toolbars and buttons but you would have to float at least one toolbar or dock it into a new row. Use the View > Toolbars command to control which toolbars are displayed. You can rearrange the toolbars for your convenience - just drag them anywhere on the screen (or a secondary monitor). You can also drag individual buttons from one toolbar to another.
Toolbars not initially displayed are shown below.
The Steel Design toolbar gives faster access to some of the most-used steel design commands - Steel Restraints, Input Design Data, Copy Design Data, Check All Design Members, and Query Design Member.
As well as containing some old buttons no longer given pride of place the Extra toolbar contains some very useful new buttons. You can display the whole toolbar or select the buttons you want and place them on existing toolbars. Recommended buttons are:
Show Origin
Limit Boundary
Check Selected Design Members
Input Master-Slave
Display Structure Mass
Copy Member Attributes
The OK toolbar provides a shortcut to the OK and Cancel Selection commands on the pop-up menu that appears when you right-click after selecting nodes or members for a command.
Microstran's configuration settings are persistent from one session to the next. In previous versions you could initialize these settings by deleting an .ini file in the Windows folder. The configuration settings are now stored in the registry and a special program, MsReset.exe, is provided to delete all Microstran configuration keys if necessary. This is preferable to editing the registry, which may be difficult and is potentially risky. With Windows Explorer you should be able to find MsReset.exe in the \Mswin\Program folder. You may double-click on it to execute it. After running MsReset.exe any customization of toolbars will be lost.
Microstran is well suited for operation with dual monitors. You may drag any of the control bars (toolbars, menu bar, or the output window) to any position on the desktop, including another monitor. The position of each will be remembered from one Microstran run to the next so you don't have to keep adjusting them. Many dialog boxes too, will reappear where you left them. This means, for example, that you can have the Member Properties dialog box always appearing on the secondary monitor.