Poke Tool

Found in Mouse Tools

The Poke Tool is for interacting with a circuit: use the mouse and keyboard to probe values, change inputs, edit values stored in registers and memory, and prod other components to change state or perform actions.

Live Circuit: Interaction using input and poke tool

Many components respond to being poked:

• Poke a Button, DipSwitch, or Joystick to change it's value.
• Poke a binary Input Pin to toggle its value, or poke a decimal or hex input pin then type enter new values.
• Poke a Register, Counter, or other memory component then type to modify the values stored within.
• Poke a Clock, repeatedly, to make it tick.
• Poke a wire or bus segment to see the value it carries, and hilight the entire connected set of wire segments. For a bus, poke again (or hit Space, Tab or Enter, to cycle through display in hex, signed decimal, and other encodings.

  Hint: When poking a bus wire, you can configure which encodings are shown first — binary, signed decimal, unsigned decimal, octal, hexadecimal — by going to Layout preferences.

• Poke an Embedded Subcircuit (double-click the magnifying glass that appears) to open and inspect its internal circuit.
• Poke a Hyperlink component, or links in styled text block comments to open the URL in a browser.

For some pokable components, like multi-bit Registers, hex or multi-bit Input Pins, the mouse and keyboard must be used in combination: poke the component to select it, then type to enter hex or other data.

Easy Keyboard Hotkeys

Poking things with the mouse can be tiresome, especially for circuits with several inputs or buttons. You can enable easy keyboard interaction in your circuits: just label any component with a one-letter name. Then, when using the poke tool, typing the letter will poke that named component, just as if you had clicked it. This only works if you haven't already selected some component that expects keyboard input. Case does not matter here, 'a' and 'A' are treated the same.

You can even name several components with the same hotkey, typing it will poke them all. This kind of keyboard interaction is most useful with buttons and one-bit input pins.

Editing While Using Poke Tool

Note: Poke is for interaction, not editing. While the poke tool is active, you can't move components, draw wires, drag-to-select components, or do most other editing-related actions. Those require the Edit Tool.

There are some exceptions. When you poke a component, its properties are shown in the lower left panel, and you can still edit properties there while still keeping the poke tool active. If you paste some previously-copied components while the poke tool is active, Logisim automatically switches to the Edit Tool so you can place the pasted components.