Project Tools
January 2021
Circuit has a number of features, functions and tools to help manage your projects.
These are the categories of Project Tools available...
Project Manager for creating, copying and managing projects on disc, Project Explorer customization options and Clear Recent Projects...
Project Explorer for managing projects in the workspace...
Project Utilities for Sheet sorting, file compacting and project exporting...
Project Manager
From the Options menu please refer to Project Manager for setting up a New Project.
With Options > Project Explorer > ... the font and colours of the Project Explorer can be customized...
With Options > Clear Recent Projects all the projects in the Project Explorer will be removed from the list (they will NOT be removed from disc)...
Press [Yes] and the recent project list will be cleared.
Project Explorer
These are options for managing projects in the workspace with no significant impact on any project files.
File > Add Project opens up the Project Manager in User Mode - you only have the option to Add a project from the currently selected projects folder...
File > Remove Project will close and clear the selected project from the recent projects list in the Project Explorer.
Ensure the project to be removed has it's folder selected before using this feature, for example...
Then try the feature, and you will be prompted as the example follows...
Press [Yes] to complete.
File > Close Project will close the active open project. If there is a potential need to save any current Sheet in Edit Mode you will be prompted before the project is closed.
Project Not Found
In the event that a project is deleted, moved or renamed outside of Circuit, yet it is still on the Recent Projects list, it's title will be displayed high-lighted in a red background, as shown...
If the situation cannot be resolved, then the project can be removed from the list as described above.
If you can resolve the issue, then Circuit must be restarted to clear the fault text.
Project Utilities
These are options which could have a significant impact on your project files.
Sort Sheets
The usefulness of this feature will come about when you perhaps have added some new Sheets at the end of a project, or have renamed a number of Sheets.
Using Options > Sort Sheets A-Z, 0-9 literally will sort all the Sheets of the selected project into Alpha-Numerical order.
You will be prompted to confirm...
Press [Yes] to complete the sort function.
Tip: To sort Sheets in any particular order, edit the manifest.xml file in the project folder with a text editor, and just be careful about keeping the XML integrity.
Compact Project
Through-out the course of adding and deleting Text objects, drawing entities and data-base components whilst your design evolves over some time, there will potentially be orphaned and left behind entities in the textfile.xml and database.xml files.
Using Options > Compact Project will purge all such data out of those files to reduce un-necessary data processing and of course, file size.
You will be prompted to confirm...
Press [Yes] to complete the compact function.
Localise Project
For the most part, a user of Circuit will work from one workstation and produce their projects and content, and that's where the data will stay.
However, should it become a requirement to fully transfer a project from one PC to another, then all project resources, including images and files being contained into one moveable folder would be ideal.
Using Options > Localise Project will COPY all resources referenced in a project into the Project Folder, and thereby enable the wholesale moving or copying of that project to another location.
You will be prompted to confirm...
Press [Yes] to complete the compact function.
Note: After using this action, Circuit will first look to the original folder of an image path, then if not found, will look to the Project Folder.
That's all for using Project Tools for now.