Expanding means bringing into view any subentities associated with an entity. Collapsing means taking those subentities away from view. A highlighted icon (a dark diamond) in front of an entity or subentity indicates that it has children and may be expanded or collapsed. For example, when you expand the Node entity, its subentities, such as Event Dispatcher, Alias, etc. will appear.
1 – how_to_expand_collapse
There are two methods to perform the expand/collapse action. The easiest way is to double-click the left-most mouse button on an entity in the main window. (Of course, if you have changed your Session Manager Options and are using the Left-Handed Mouse Button Arrangement, use the right-most button instead.) Another way to expand or collapse an entity is to single click the left mouse button on the entity to select it and then select Expand or Collapse from the Actions pulldown menu.
2 – how_to_see_ncl
Some entities take longer to expand than others because the application is busy querying the system about the subentities. For example, expanding routing circuit adjacencies will generally take longer on an intermediate system than it will on an end system. If you are curious about what NCL commands the application is performing on your behalf, you can select Default Actions from the Options pulldown and enable NCL to display those commands.