Items in the Features and Entitiestrees may be sorted into alphabetical order. Select an item in either the Features or Entities panel, then click the Sort button or choose Sort tree items from the Edit menu.
Lucid Builder Sort Entities dialog
Lucid Builder Sort Features dialog
A dialog box will provide three options.
Choose Sort all descendents to alphabetically sort the descendents of the selected feature;
Choose Sort siblings to alphabetically sort the siblings of the selected item;
Choose Sort entire tree to sort all items in the tree.
Arranging and managing items within the Features and Entities panel can be achieved by using standard operating system methods of Drag and Drop and Cut, Copy and Paste. The Lucid Builder will automatically prevent any movement of items that don’t match logical groupings or inbuilt rules that maintain data consistency.
Drag and Drop items
Items in the Features and Entities trees may be moved to new positions in the tree by dragging and dropping. An item may be dragged to any position within its tree as long as the following rules are not violated:
A feature may not be dropped in a position where it would become the sibling of a state
A state may not be dropped in a position where there is a sibling feature already present.
Items may not be dropped as siblings of existing items with identical names
The Builder will confirm what you wish to do with the item(s) on the destination you have dropped to, via a confirmation dialog.
Lucid Builder Confirm drag and drop action dialog
You may also drag and drop several items at a time:
To select a contiguous range of items, select the first item then hold down the Shift key and select the last item in the range
To select a non-contiguous range of items, hold down the Control key while selecting each item.
To drag a selection of items:
on Microsoft Windows or Linux, click and drag using the left mouse button.
on a Macintosh, hold down the Shift key while dragging.
Tip
You may only drag and drop a multiple selection if all the selected items are siblings.
Merge Drop
Merge Drop allows two items to be merged by dragging the merge item and dropping it onto a recipient item while holding down the Ctrl key.
Merge Drop has an important role to play when importing a key for merging, particularly for resolving conflicts after the import. These conflicts can often be resolved by manually merging items using Merge Drop.
Merge Drop can be used in the following ways:
State merging: Dropping a state onto another state will result in scores of the dropped state being merged with the receiving state using the score merging rules defined under Import Merging. The receiving state retains its name and the dropped state is removed from its original position in the tree.
Feature merging: Dropping a feature onto another feature will result in its states, and all scores for those states, being merged with the receiving feature. Dropped features must be of the same type as the receiving feature (that is, you may not merge a multistate with a numeric feature). In the case of multistate features, any states present in the dropped feature that are not present in the receiving feature are added to the receiving feature. Any common states have their scores merged using the score merging rules defined under Import Merging. The receiving feature retains its name and the dropped feature is removed from its original position in the tree.
Entity merging: Dropping an entity onto another entity will result in the scores for both entities being merged together. The receiving entity retains its name and the dropped entity is removed from its original position in the tree.
Moving items using Cut, Copy and Paste
Items in the Features and Entities trees may be moved to new positions in the tree using the familiar Cut, Copy and Paste operations.
To cut or copy an item, select it by clicking on it with the mouse then either:
Choose Cut or Copy from the Edit menu or right click context pop-up menu, or
Click the Cut or Copy buttons on the toolbar (see below), or
Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-C (copy) or Ctrl-X (cut)
To paste an item that you have copied or cut, select another item in the tree then either:
Choose Paste as child or Paste as sibling from the Edit menu.
Click the Paste as child or Paste as sibling buttons on the toolbar, or;
Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-V.
Note
There are restrictions on where an item can be pasted in the tree. For example, a state cannot logically be pasted as a child of a feature that has other features as children, and a feature cannot be pasted in a position where it would become a sibling of a state. Accordingly, some menu options and buttons will be disabled depending on the positions in the tree where you are attempting the paste.
You may also paste several items at a time, by selecting multiple items before choosing Cut or Copy:
To select a contiguous range of items, select the first item then hold down the Shift key and select the last item in the range.
To select a non-contiguous range of items, hold down the Control key while selecting each item.
Note
You may only paste a multiple selection if all the selected items are siblings.
Items are added to the Features and Entities trees in one of two ways. Either via:
The context pop-up menu, when the Features or Entities panel is right clicked.
Or by main menu Tools…Add Features|Add Entities. The menu option depends on which panel (Features or Entities) has focus.
Adding items using the contextpop-up menu
Right click in the Features or Entities panel to open the context pop-up menu. If you click with an empty area of the panel then the context menu will only offer Add options for adding a new Feature or Entity. If however, you have an existing Feature or Entity then right clicking on one of these will add additional options to the context menu such as adding a new Feature or Entity as a Sibling or Parent.
Features – Add Options
Add Feature – will add a new Feature to the root of the Feature tree. The position of the new Feature will be below the currently selected Feature (if one exists).
Add Feature as Child – This option will only be available if at least one Feature already exists in the Features Panel. The newly created Feature will be added to the currently selected Feature, if the Feature does not have any states. In other words the selected Feature can become a Grouping Feature. The Lucid Builder will enforce tree building rules to prevent any issues with the mismatching options. See the note below for further details on this.
Add Feature as Parent – This option will add a new Feature as a parent of the currently selected Feature.
Add State – The Add State option is only available to non-grouping Features and non-numeric Features. Adding one or more States to a Feature turns the Feature into a Multi-State Feature. A Feature State is indicated by a blue diamond icon () to the left of its label.
Entities context pop-up menu add option
Entities – Add Options
Add Entity – will add a new Entity to the root of the Entities tree. The position of the new Entity will be below the currently selected Entity (if one exists).
Add Entity as Child – This option will only be available if at least one Entity already exists in the Entities Panel. The newly created Entity will be added to the currently selected Entity, if the Entity does not have any specimens. In other words the selected Entity can become a Grouping Entity. The Lucid Builder will enforce tree building rules to prevent any issues with the mismatching options. See the note below for further details on this.
Add Entity as Parent – This option will add a new Entity as a parent of the currently selected Entity.
Add Specimen – Adds a Specimen Entity as a child of the selected Entity. Specimen Entities can only be added where the parent entity isn’t a Grouping Entity. That is they can only be ‘leaves’ of the Entity tree. See here for more information on Specimen Entities.
Adding items using main menu Tools…Import Features | Entities
The ‘Add Features’ or ‘Add Entities’ option (depending on which tree panel is selected) allows you to quickly add multiple items (or even just one item).
Import Features
The ‘Import Features’ dialog allows you to quickly add multiple Features and States to the Feature tree. Each line within the text area represents a Feature or State. You can represent the Feature tree by using tabs. For example, a Feature entered without a preceding tab would be added as a root element within the Feature tree. While an item added with a preceding tab would be added as state, unless it has child items (represented by an additional tab). Below shows an example Feature set ready for adding:
Lucid Builder Add Features dialog text example
Import mode: Append to tree
The text block of Features and/or States to be imported will be processed and then added to the end of the existing Feature tree. If an element already exists with the same label then the newly imported element will be renamed by appending a count number to keep the same level elements labels unique.
Import Mode: Merge with tree
Rather than just appending the text block of Features and/or States to the end of the existing Feature tree as with the ‘Append to tree’ option, the merge option will look for matching structure and element labels and merge any new elements into the existing tree structure. If no matching structure or elements are found then the text block items will be appended to the end of the tree.
Import Entities
The ‘Import Entities‘ dialog allows you to quickly add multiple Entities to the Entities tree. For the ‘Add Entities’ option to be available in the Tools menu the ‘Entities Panel’ must have focus. Each line within the text area of the dialog represents an Entity. You can represent a tree structure of Entities by using tabs.
Import mode: Append to tree
The text block of Entities to be imported will be processed and then added to the end of the existing Entity tree. If an element already exists with the same label then the newly imported element will be renamed by appending a count number to keep the same level elements labels unique.
Import Mode: Merge with tree
Rather than just appending the text block of Entities to the end of the existing Entities tree as with the ‘Append to tree’ option, the merge option will look for matching structure and element labels and merge any new elements into the existing tree structure. If no matching structure or elements are found then the text block items will be appended to the end of the tree.
Note
There are built-in rules within the Lucid Builder to prevent you from adding items into logically inappropriate places. For example, if the currently selected item in the Features tree is a state, you will be unable to choose the Add as Child or Add as Parent options, as states may not have children and any state already has a parent. Similarly, if the currently selected item is a feature that already has states, you will not be able to select the Add as Child option if the Add Feature button is selected, since a feature that has states as children may not also have a feature as a child.
In Lucid keys, Features and Entities can be arranged in hierarchical trees. Where this is the case, nodes of the tree are opened and closed using button icons to the left of each node:
Alternatively, the Collapse All and Open All buttons on the toolbar will collapse or open all nodes.
In some Lucid keys, Features and Entities may be arranged into hierarchical trees, with sub-features nested within Features and sub-Entities nested within Entities. For example, a key to garden vegetables may have features arranged using a morphological hierarchy (with leaf, flower and fruit features nested under appropriate headings), and entities arranged into a taxonomic hierarchy (with species nested within genera etc.).
In the Lucid Player, Features and Entities are sometimes displayed in a tree, and sometimes displayed in a list. For example, by choosing the Trees or Lists tabs in the Player an user can switch views. Some functions in the Lucid Player, such as Sort Best and Ranked Mode require that the features or entities be viewed as lists. See the Player Help for more.
The Lucid Builder can automatically convert a feature or entity tree view back to a list. You can set specific wordings to be used for any item when viewed as either a tree or a list. See the topic Setting properties for items for more information.
This ability to convert a tree view back to a list view is particularly useful when you want a tree view in the web/desktop Lucid Player, but would prefer a list view in the Lucid mobile app Player.
Note
In the Lucid Builder, you can specify which items in the Entities tree should appear when using List View, and which should only occur in Tree View. See the topic Setting properties for items for more information.
When you open the Lucid Builder you will see two main panels, titled Features and Entities, that hold the feature (character) and entity (e.g. taxon) trees to be used in the key. In addition, on the left of the main screen are a series of tabbed pages used to set various properties for the key and for items in the other panels.
Entities in Lucid are the things the key aims to identify. Depending on the scope of the key, the entities may be different kinds of things. For example, in a key to the palms of Brazil, the Entities will be species of palms, in a key to the families of flies of the world the entities will be fly families, in a key to minerals the Entities will be types of minerals, in a key to disorders of sweet potatoes the Entities will be the causes of disorders found in sweet potatoes.
In Lucid we use the term Entity because it applies to all the animals, plants, other organisms, human artifacts, or other possible things that a key may be designed to help identify. Lucid itself doesn’t know whether the Entities are species of plants, families of flies, minerals or diseases – they are all simply Entities to Lucid, and are all handled in the same way.
Specimen Entities are ‘sub’ Entities and used to track individual data associated with the parent Entity. For example, specimen entities can represent real world specimens and track their features, via scoring. This data is then combined to form the data of the parent Entity. Imagine you were studying a new species of plant and wanted to record the details of several specimens. Each would be added as an Entity specimen and if we had a numeric feature for leaf length we could record this data. The leaf length feature values for each specimen would be combined to form the parent entity’s leaf length numeric scoring range.
Features in Lucid are characteristics of the Entities in the key that can be used to describe each Entity.
For example, in a key to minerals one feature may be the types of crystalline form shown by the mineral. Of the minerals in the key, there will be a number of different crystal forms – such as cubic, tetragonal etc. The different possibilities for crystal form are called States of the Feature. States of a Feature are indicated in the Lucid Builder by blue diamonds preceding the State names.
In Lucid there are three main types of features.
Feature types in Lucid
Multi-state Features have two or more alternative states.
Numeric Features, by contrast, are ones in which real numbers (integer or decimal) are used to describe the Entities. Numeric Features are normally used for lengths, widths, ratios and counts. For example, a key to butterflies may use a numeric Feature for the length of the forewing, or for the number of segments in the antennae.
Grouping Features are Features that contain other Features. Grouping Features can be converted to numeric Features via the Items property window and vice versa.
Keys created in v3.x are compatible with version 4 Builder.
These older file formats can be opened directly in Lucid v4 without having first to perform a conversion process.
Warning
While it is possible to open a v4 file in older versions of Lucid this should not be done. New features and changes to the v4 file format will be lost if the key is saved via the older edition.
Upgrading from Lucid Phoenix
Keys created in Lucid Phoenix can be easily imported into version 4 Builder. Select the Phoenix deployed file (.lpxk) to import, via the key import option on the main menu. I.e. File…Import…Import Key.
Tip
To import a Phoenix data file the type of key started in the Builder must have been set to a pathway key.
A Java Runtime Environment (JRE) must be installed for the Lucid Builder to install and run successfully. To check if you have Java installed on your system type the following command into a Command Prompt (Windows) or a Terminal console (OSX, Linux):
java -version
For example:
Example Java version check.
If you receive an “Unknown Command” error message then you most likely do not have a JRE installed. Please download and install one of the following JRE’s:
or Copy 
from the Edit menu or right click context pop-up menu, or
buttons on the toolbar will collapse or open all nodes.
