Hiding and Closing

Panes are hidden or closed exclusively from the controls on their title bars (panes are only opened, not closed, from the Documents and Panes menus). The possible closure states of a pane are determined by the buttons presented on the title bar. These are as follows.

closes the window

hides the window

If a button is not present on a pane’s title bar, the operation it represents is not possible for that pane.

Hiding vs. Closing

A hidden pane is present but not visible. Whatever operations it performs and resources it requires are active while hidden. By contrast, a closed pane is not just not visible, it is not extant (and thus is not consuming computer resources). If (in)visibility alone is the only concern, the distinction is not significant. However, there are cases where, even hidden, activity within some panes — such as the i State Record pane, for instance — is intensive enough that it can impact speed of calculations, in which case closing the window, rather than hiding it, may be advisable.

Table 1: Available Closure States for Each Pane Type

Pane	Close	Hide
Console		x
Project		x
State Record	x	x
Extrusion*	x	x
Building Blocks*	x	x
Model*	x	x
IPython Console		x
View	x	x
Editor	x	x
Listing	x	x
*Available in FLAC3D only.

Warning

Keep in mind that plots, unlike data files, have no separate existence from the project. They are stored in the project file. Thus, closing the i View pane that contains a plot permanently deletes the plot — there is no mechanism to restore or reopen it.