Initially, there is only one editing window on the screen. Electric allows you to create multiple editing windows, each of which can show a different cell. You can also have the same cell in more than one window to see it at different scales and locations.

New windows are created by checking the appropriate checkbox in the New Cell... or Edit Cell... commands (in menu Cell). New windows can also be created from the cell explorer by using the context button on a cell name.

To delete a window, click its close box, or use the Close Window command (in menu Window). Note that you cannot delete the last window on UNIX systems, because the UNIX pulldown menus are part of the edit windows.

When there are many editing windows on the display, you can arrange them neatly with the Window / Adjust Position commands. The Tile Horizontally command adjusts the windows so that they are full-width, but just tall enough to fill the screen, one above the other. The Tile Vertically command adjusts the windows so that they are full-height, but just wide enough to fill the screen, one next to the other. The Cascade command adjusts the windows so that they are all the same size and overlap each other uniformly from the upper-left to the lower-right.

### Window Frames

When Electric runs under Windows, each editing window lives inside of a larger frame on the display. This is called an MDI (Multiple Document Interface) interaction. On non-Windows systems (UNIX/Linux, Macintosh, etc.) each editing window is a separate frame on the display. This is called an SDI (Single Document Interface) interaction. Note that Windows users can request an SDI interaction with the proper command-line switch (see Section 1-4).

When running in SDI mode, there are two extra commands (in menu Windows) for controlling the frames:

- "Move to Other Display" requests that the current window frame be moved to a different display. Some systems (Macintosh) let you drag the frames between displays, but others keep each display distinct, requiring this command to make the move.
- Remember Location of Display" requests that the current editing window's frame location be used as the initial location when Electric runs again. This command can also be used to start the system on a different display.

### Display Considerations

Electric optimizes the display of circuitry by simplifying the display of objects when they get to be very small. For example, when zoomed-out very far, a transistor may be only 1 screen pixel in size, and it does not make sense to carefully compute and draw all of its parts. In such cases, Electric "simplifies" the display of the object, usually drawing it as a single dot.

Besides simplifying individual nodes and arcs, Electric also simplifies the display of entire cells if their contents are all too small to draw. Such simplification consists of keeping a small "image" of the cell, which can be quickly scaled and drawn in the proper place.

There are two controls available for display simplification, both available in the "General" preferences (in menu File / Preferences..., "General" section, "General" tab). The first control determines the size at which objects are simplified. The default is to "Simplify objects smaller than 3 pixels". Making this value smaller will cause more detailled drawing, but take longer. The next control determines the threshold for simplifying entire cells. Although a cell's contents may be small, the cell may be quite large on the screen, and so should not be simplified (this happens to top-level cells in a deep hierarchy). The default limit is to "Do not simplify cells greater than 10 percent of the screen". Making this number smaller causes more cells to be drawn fully. Making this number zero turns off cell simplification.