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## Locking vis windows together

Figure 6

When you use VisIt to do side by side comparisons of databases, you may find is useful to lock vis windows together. Vis windows can be locked together in time so that when you change the active database timestep in one database, as when viewing an animation, all vis windows that are locked in time switch to the same database timestep. You can lock vis windows together in time by selecting the Time option from the Lock menu (see figure) in the Main Window's Windows menu. Any number of windows can be locked together in time and you can turn off time locking at any time.

You can also lock interactive tools together so that updating a tool in one window updates the tool in other windows that have enabled tool locking. This can be useful when you have sliced a database using the plane tool in more than one window and you want to be able to change the slice using plane tool in either window and have it affect the other vis windows. You can enable tool locking by selecting the Tools option from the Lock menu.

In addition to locking vis windows in time, or locking their tools together, you can also lock vis windows' views together so that when you change the view in one vis window, other vis windows get the same view. When you change the view in a vis window that has view locking enabled, the view only effects other vis windows that also have view locking enabled and have plots of the same dimension. That is, when you change the view of a vis window that contains 3D plots, it will only have an effect on other locked vis windows if they have 3D plots. Vis windows that contain 2D plots are not affected by changing the view of a vis window containing 3D plots and vice-versa. When you enable view locking, the vis window snaps to the view used by other vis windows with locked views or it stays the same if no other vis windows have locked views. To enable view locking, select the View option from the Lock menu or click on the Lock view icon in the vis window's Toolbar.