Also, you can edit all of the blocks there, directly on the screen in eas圜, you have to double-click on the function block, which opens a popup window where you make your changes. Things like if and while statements show up as a wrap-around colored block to clearly show which commands are inside that part of the program flow. Once you create a program with this graphical interface, it looks something like the screenshot below, with large color-coded blocks. You can do this from the Window / Menu Level flyout menu.
ROBOTC FUNCTIONS FULL
I really don’t understand the concept behind even having this option, but I’d recommend immediately telling it that you’re a “Super User” in order to see the full complement of functions. The default appears to assume that you are a “Basic” user, and shows you only a limited list of items. Tip: when you launch the graphical editor, you may not see all that many drag-and-drop commands in the left-hand “Graphical Functions” column. * OK, well not every function eas圜 bizarrely has sophisticated functions that you can only find in the help files, and then you must copy & paste them into a write-your-own-code function block. The options available in the drag-and-drop universe of RobotC are rather limited, IMO (unless I’m just missing something)-and much more limited than what’s available in eas圜 since eas圜 is drag-and-drop-only, every command and function is available in the graphical function list.* So I guess I’d say that if you’re starting with RobotC’s graphical interface, try to step up to the next level quickly so that your team’s capabilities have room to grow. We started with eas圜 in our rookie year for this same reason however, now that we’re more advanced and want to jump up to the big leagues, we need to go back to Square 1 of sorts and learn a whole new interface. For teams that are just starting out with both robotics as well as the concept of programming, this is probably the place for you. Similar to eas圜, RobotC’s “graphical” version is a drag-and-drop interface. So it’s pretty important to figure out from the get-go which editor type you plan to use. Keep track of your file names (like, keep a copy of the graphical file before you convert it might do this for you, but just double check) so that you can retrieve your old program if you need to. If you create a graphical program, you can convert it to text-based using View / Convert Graphical File to Text menu option, but you can’t go back the other way if you change your mind about the whole concept. That flyout menu gives you the choice of “Text Editor Only”, “Graphics Editor Only,” and “Text and Graphics Editor.”īut there’s one catch. Both icons launch RobotC, and once in the program, you can switch from the graphical to the text editor from the View / Preferences… / ROBOTC Editor Type menu.
Why was this confusing? Well, because you don’t actually need 2 separate icons all roads lead to Rome, as it were. When I installed RobotC on my computer, it created these 2 different icons on my desktop, which were the start of my confusion.
I thought I’d share that information here, in case others out there are considering RobotC and are not really sure what’s what. In my preliminary (self-)education about RobotC, I was mightily confused about what this whole “natural language” thing was, and how it related to the drag-and-drop (“graphical”) editor or “regular” RobotC.