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The Components pane gives you a place to create and store preconfigured objects and groups of objects. You can reuse any such component by dragging it from the pane to a template. This can be helpful when you need to add an object to your template whose properties are nearly identical to those of another object that you created earlier, either on the same template or on a different one.

Organizing and Navigating the Pane

The Components pane operates like any standard Windows directory. You can switch between tree, icon, and list views by using the View option on the context menu. In any view, the standard context menu options to cut, copy, paste, rename, and delete components are available. You can navigate between folders and move or copy items as you would in any directory. The context menu also gives you the option to create new folders, so that you can organize your components into logical sets and subsets.

To move up to the parent folder in the icon or list view, double-click the Up [Components] icon.

Creating and Storing a Reusable Component

After you add a new object to a template and configure its properties, you can store the object for reuse by adding it to the Components pane. To do this, right-click the object, and then click Create Component. An icon that represents the component appears in the Components pane (in the currently selected folder) with the temporary name "Component". You can overwrite the temporary name with a new name by entering the name that you want.

If you plan to reuse an entire set of objects, you can create a component that consists of a group of objects. After you group the objects, right-click the group, and then click Create Component. For more information about how to group objects, refer to Creating an Object Group.