The explorer pane

######### The navigation panel has two functions. It can present the circuits being simulated in the view simulation or as here the circuits in the top and the lower the libraries represented by folders. These libraries include tools you can use in your projects.

To access a library's components, you have only to double-click the corresponding folder or a click on the tiny key.

Below, I have opened the Gates library and selected the NAND tool from it. You can see that Logisim now stands ready to add NAND gates into the circuit.

#########

If you look through the choices in the Gates library, you'll notice that there was no need for us to develop a XOR circuit earlier: It's built into Logisim.

When you create a project, it automatically includes several libraries:

Logisim allows you to add more libraries, too, using the menu | Project || Load Library | submenu of the Project menu. You can see that Logisim has three categories of libraries.

To remove a library, choose menu | Project || Unload Library ... |. Logisim will prevent you from unloading libraries that contain components used in a circuit, that appear in the toolbar, or that are mapped to a mouse button.

#########

It is also possible to do this by pressing a click-left on the library to disable.

Incidentally, a library technically contains tools, not components. Thus, in the Base library you'll find the Poke Tool (#########), the Edit Tool (#########), and other tools that don't correspond directly to individual components. Most libraries, though, contain only tools for adding individual components; all built-in libraries other than the "Base" library are like this.

Next: Toolbars.