Qt Designer¶

Installing the Qt Designer¶

In a terminal, install Qt Designer 5 with

sudo apt install qttools5-dev-tools

Note

The Qt6 Designer is not required nor better; Qt5 Designer is fine.

Run the Qt Designer from the Applications > Programming menu and create a new Main Window

To add a Tool Bar, right click on the main window and select Add Tool Bar

To add a Menu, type in the menu area and press enter

When you create a Menu item it creates an action; this action can be dragged to the Tool Bar to create a tool bar button

Adding items from the Widget Box is drag-and-drop. To create a basic layout from Containers, add two Frames and a Tab Widget

Right click in the QMainWindow and select Lay out –> Lay out Vertically

Add a Push Button to the QFrame, then right click on the frame or the QFrame in the Object Inspector and set the lay out to grid

After dragging a widget into the window, make sure you use the correct objectName for that widget. For example the E-Stop button is called estop_pb.

Note

Each object name must be unique; designer will not allow duplicate names.

Save the GUI in the configuration directory alongside your .ini file.

You can start Qt5 Designer from a terminal with designer & which spawns a new process (gives you back the terminal prompt.)

Note

There is an documented issue with Qt5 Designer and bold fonts not appearing properly.

Qt6 Designer can be installed from a terminal with

sudo apt install designer-qt6

To run Qt6 Designer you must use the full path to the executable

/usr/lib/qt6/bin/designer