Welcome to CASCADE. There are three sections to this help document. The first section explains the installation steps. The second section guides you through the login process with the assumption that CASCADE has been configured correctly. The last section explains possible problems which may occur during the first time that you login to CASCADE.
Before you go much further, you should take a moment to learn more about the CASCADE Help system. We would suggest that you start by going to the Navigation menu and opening up the Table of Contents. You will see in the top window that there is one document called "CASCADE Help." The bottom window shows the many sections to CASCADE Help. Note that you are currently reading "Preparing the System." There are other sections on "Getting Started with CASCADE," "CASCADE Features," etc... and all the sections are fully woven together like an encyclopedia. Notice the arrows at the bottom of the help window, with the word "Entry" between them. If you repeatedly click the arrow pointing to the right, you would go linearly from the section on "Preparing the system" all the way to the last section which is "CASCADE FAQ."
Three last comments about Help before we go on. First, CASCADE help is context sensitive, which when requested will provide help based on what you were doing at the time you asked for help. To request help while in CASCADE simply press the F1-key while in the CASCADE window where you need help. Second, CASCADE Help is hypertext based. Hypertext means that the text which appears in red are links that will take you to some other point within CASCADE Help. Once you have jumped with a hypertext link, you will need to use the Back option that is in the Navigation menu to return to the Help page from which you jumped. Third, note that there is a search option in the Navigation menu which provides a keyword search.
Installing CASCADE on your machine is a simple operation. However, before you start the installation, you need to check whether your machine meets the installation requirements.
This section is divided into two sub-sections, the installation requirements and the installation process.
You need to have the four CASCADE installation disks. These disks will install the CASCADE client onto your system, which will allow you to connect to the CASCADE server. It is assumed that your machine is connected to the Internet, either permanently or through an internet service provider. The CASCADE software requires a Pentium processor and either the Windows95 or WindowsNT operating system. It will not work with Windows 3.1x running on a DOS machine.
Additionally, CASCADE has been designed to work on machines that have very large display screens. To change your screen resolution, select from your Start menu the Settings, Control Panel, Display Settings option and change your screen size to 1024x768. We would actually advise that you do this while using CASCADE. If you use a low resolution screen size such as 800x600, please note that you may have to re-adjust windows that are opened by CASCADE.
There is a very simple way to install CASCADE. First, make sure that you have exited all opened (active) window programs. If you have downloaded the self-extracting file "cascade.exe" from the CASCADE web page at www.sis.pitt.edu/~cascade, then you just need to double-click on this file and it will run InstallShield which will install CASCADE onto your machine.
If you have the 4 installation disks instead of the single cascade.exe file, then first insert disk #1 in your floppy drive. Next, open the "My Computer" icon, select the drive in which you inserted Disk #1, and then double-click on the file called Setup. (Note: You can also use the "Add/Remove" program in the "Control Panel" under "Settings"). If this is your first experience installing software, look for the program called Setup.exe. If your Windows Explorer is set to use icons, the icon for the program Setup.exe will appear as a little computer with a box of floppies next to it.
After you double-click on the Setup.exe program, you will be taken through the standard install process. This will include the use of the InstallShield code that will allow you to easily uninstall CASCADE at a later date. You will be asked to place floppy disks #2, #3 and #4 into the floppy drive as needed.
You should accept all the defaults suggested during the setup process unless you have some good reason to want to change things. You should note in which directory where CASCADE will be installed. The setup process will create the program icon and uncompress the CASCADE files into there own directory which by default will be:
After the setup process has completed, CASCADE should have been installed as an option in your startup menu. If not, your system administrator has protected the menu in some way. If this is the case, you should create a shortcut to CASCADE on your desktop. You create a shortcut by going to the CASCADE install directory (via "My Computer"), click-and-hold on the CASCADE executable, and drag it to the your desktop. After you have created a shortcut to CASCADE on you desktop just double-click on the CASCADE shortcut to start using CASCADE.
When you start CASCADE the first thing that will happen is a login window will appear on your screen.
Depending upon how CASCADE has been configured for you, the login window should have the machine name already in place. However, if this is the first time for you to run CASCADE, you will find this area blank and you will need to add the port number and server name. To add the port number and server name, click inside the Server text field and then click on "Set New Server" and you will be able to enter the server and port information. If you do not know what server name or port number you are to connect to, you will need to contact the person who gave you the CASCADE software. The "Set New Server" dialog box will look like this:
After you enter the server name and port number close the Network dialog window. Then enter the user name and password given to you into the login window and click OK.
Your login information will be verified by the CASCADE server and another dialog box will appear asking you to choose which CASCADE project you wish to work on. In many cases, you may only be working on one project. The number following a project name indicates the number of activities that have happened since your last login.
Once you have clicked the OK button, CASCADE will download a lot of project information and open up the main CASCADE screen from where you may begin to use CASCADE.
Running "CASCADE client" for the first time
One thing to remember when you are going to run CASCADE is that you must have established an internet connection. This is because you will need to communicate with the CASCADE server at the University of Pittsburgh during your CASCADE session.
The first time you start CASCADE, it may fail to find the file preferences.vr in the proper place -- a place called "home directory". Based on how your machine is configured, this could be any number of directories. CASCADE will give you a message that tells you the directory where the "preferences.vr" file needs to be put. By default CASCADE will create the "home directory"
C:\Program Files\CASCADE
You can easily accept the given default by clicking "OK" in the pop-up dialog box.