Click Import individuals on the File menu, which brings up a "file chooser" dialog. Locate the file tutorial.csv (which should be in the folder in which Parity Builder is installed) and open it. This brings up a table showing the data. In the tutorial, the columns contain the first names of the children, a ranking of their athletic ability on a scale of 1 to 3, their gender ('m' for male, 'f' for female), the grade they are in at school (either 1 or 2), an indication whether they are experienced in this sport ('y' for yes, 'n' for no), and the neighborhood (east, west, south) in which they live. The first row contains column labels.
Each row and each column has a drop-down control that lets you select what to do with the row or column. For rows, you can either skip them (they contain irrelevant information), import them (they contain records of individuals) or treat them as column headers. For columns, you can either skip them or assign them to attributes (assuming you have entered some attributes, which as yet you have not). Regardless of what you choose for a row, Parity Builder will automatically skip it if it contains no entries in any of the columns you have chosen to import (meaning either that the row is empty, or it contains data only in columns you have elected to skip).
Use the drop-down box next to the first row to designate it as headers. Notice that the column drop-down controls immediately switch to displaying the labels from that row as column headings. These are your default attribute names. You still have the option of skipping any of the columns (if it contains extraneous information). In this case, all the columns contain meaningful attributes, and all the rows (other than the first) contain data on children, so leave everything else alone and click the Accept button.
Parity Builder now alerts you that you have implicitly added six new attributes (first name, ranking, gender, grade, experience and neighborhood) and that they are all initially be treated as labels (which you will change in a moment). Click OK to continue. Next, Parity Builder presents you with a drop-down list of the attributes and asks you to designate which one will be used to identify individuals. Select the first name attribute and click OK. Parity Builder automatically switches you to the Individuals tab, where you can see the imported data. Note that both the Individuals and Attributes tabs have asterisks (*), indicating unsaved changes.
While on the Individuals tab, you can edit data simply by clicking in a cell. Clicking on the number in the leftmost column will select the entire row. You can select multiple rows using Control-left click or a group of consecutive rows by selecting the first and the Shift-clicking on the last row. The Delete option on the Individuals menu will then let you delete the selected individuals. You can use the Insert option on the Individuals menu to add new individuals.
At this point, you are ready to edit the attributes.
| previous: Create a new project | next: Edit attributes |
