Task panel

Introduction
The task panel appears in the tab of the combo view, one of the important panels of the interface. It is a customizable space that is able to contain any type of graphical widget like collapsible sub-windows, tables, input fields, checkboxes, spinboxes, selector boxes, text boxes, buttons, labels, images, and other elements, depending on the currently active workbench, and the currently active tool.



Working with the task panel
A task panel normally opens when a tool that requires user input is activated, either by pressing a toolbar button or double clicking on an object. If the tool doesn't need user input, it will produce its result or terminate, but won't display a task panel.

The user input may be anything such as text, 3D point coordinates, elements from a list, faces from a shape, or options to modify the way the tool operates.



There are many commands that require selection of shapes or objects present in the document; for such cases the task panel will wait for the user to select the appropriate objects from the tree view or the 3D view. When a task panel is open, it is possible to switch to the tab to display the tree view to choose an object; once this is done, it is possible to switch back to the  tab to proceed with the command. The task panel is usually closed by clicking an or a  button, or pressing the  key on the keyboard to abort the command.



In particular, switching from the tab to the  tab does not terminate the active command; the task will still be running in the background. The user is responsible for properly terminating or aborting the active command before starting a different task; leaving a task running may produce errors when trying to launch other tools.