.. _taurusqtdesigner-tutorial:

Build a Taurus widget with Qt Designer
======================================

Taurus widgets behave like standard Qt widgets and can be used from Qt
Designer. Taurus provides a convenience command that starts Qt Designer with
Taurus widgets available in its widget catalog.

Launch Taurus Qt Designer
-------------------------

Run::

    taurus designer

Use ``taurus designer --help`` to see the available command-line options.

.. figure:: /_static/designer01.png
  :scale: 75

  Qt Designer with Taurus widgets available.

Design the widget
-----------------

Create the widget as you would with standard Qt Designer, combining Qt and
Taurus widgets as required.

TaurusGUI can be used to define a complete GUI, but a common workflow is to
use Qt Designer for individual widgets and then insert those widgets as panels
inside a :class:`taurus.qt.qtgui.taurusgui.TaurusGui` application.

For the TaurusGUI workflow, see :doc:`taurusgui`.

Use the generated ``.ui`` file
------------------------------

Qt Designer saves the interface as a ``.ui`` file containing an XML
description of the widget.

Load this file from a Taurus widget with the
:func:`taurus.qt.qtgui.util.UILoadable` decorator.

If Taurus widgets do not appear in Qt Designer in a Conda environment, see
:doc:`../howto/designer`.