AN APPARATUS FOR ENTERING AND DISPLAYING CONTROL COMMANDS FOR CONTROLLING A MACHINE TOOL

A control apparatus, in particular for a machine tool, has an input keyboard, for the input of items of data and/or control commands, has further a visual display unit with a screen, and has an operation unit. Items of control information can be displayed on the screen in the form of a menu and a sub-menu. A key image is placed before each item of control information, which image comprises several fields of which one field is made optically distinguishable from the other fields. The keyboard has selected keys which are arranged similarly to the fields of the key image. The key images serve for menu guidance, the operator, when selecting a command term, having to press that key which corresponds to the optically distinguishable field of the associated key image.