Choosing and switching workspace

A workspace is a directory on the harddisk containing metadata of Neuron Power Engineer, such as settings for the layout (opened →views/→perspectives and their sizes/arrangements) or settings for the opened →projects.

  • Do store your workspaces outside the installation directory of Neuron Power Engineer. This makes it easier to upgrade to a newer version.

  • Create your workspaces on a local drive. A workspace on a network drive might impair the performance of Neuron Power Engineer.

  • Do not copy or move a workspace directory because it may contain metadata with absolute file system paths. Those will be invalid if the workspace is copied/moved. It is better to switch the workspace inside Neuron Power Engineer (transferring the current setting).

  • Do not pass a workspace on (e.g. to team members). If the workspace is re-used on different workstations, problems might occur when projects are created or edited there. See "Block or library is not available in projects" for details.

  • Make sure that the workspace does not contain any special characters (such as umlauts, e.g. ä, ö, ü). If anyway, Neuron Power Engineer will not be able to load the application onto the PLC.
    For the workspace, letters A – Z or a – z, numbers 0 – 9, dots (character .), underlines (character _), dashes (character -) and blanks are allowed.

Choosing workspace

When you start Neuron Power Engineer, a dialog appears asking you to choose a workspace:

  1. Select the default workspace or enter a new one.
    Neuron Power Engineer automatically creates the default workspace in your user directory. For the Windows user Theo Test, this workspace is created and listed in the dialog: C:\Users\TheoTest\logi.cals\NeuronPowerEngineer\workspace
    If you have installed one version of Neuron Power Engineer only on your system, select the default workspace.

    If you have installed different versions of Neuron Power Engineer and you want to use them at the same time or you want to start the same version of Neuron Power Engineer repeatedly, enter a new workspace per started version of Neuron Power Engineer. If you are using the same workspace for versions that are opened at the same time, unforeseen problems might occur when operating Neuron Power Engineer.

    See "Are my projects upwards and downwards compatible?" for a procedure how to use the workspace in following versions anyhow.

  1. Check Use this as the default and do not ask again, if you do not want to choose a workspace the next time Neuron Power Engineer is started.

  2. Click OK.

You can see and change your workspace options in the preferences: menu Window, Preferences, group General, Workspaces, Startup and Shutdown
There, you can specify whether or not to see the dialog to choose a workspace when starting Neuron Power Engineer and how many workspaces to see in your recent workspaces list. Moreover, you can remove the workspaces from the list, if you no longer wish to see them.

Switching workspace

Neuron Power Engineer allows you to switch the workspace, while Neuron Power Engineer is being operated. This enables you to switch between ready-made layouts and opened projects. This is especially useful if you want to switch quickly between different purposes (e.g. creating application in project "A" and testing project "B").

How to create a new workspace (and transferring the current settings) and switch to it:

  1. Prepare Neuron Power Engineer as you wish the workspace to be: Change the layout and/or perform the requested project actions.

  2. Exit and restart Neuron Power Engineer so that the changes are saved in the current workspace.

  3. In menu File, select Switch Workspace and Other...

  4. In the dialog, enter the path for the new workspace. To transfer layout and/or the opened projects into the new workspace, expand Copy Settings and check Workbench Layout and/or Working Sets. Click OK.
    Result:  Neuron Power Engineer is automatically closed and restarted. The new workspace is activated (with the transferred settings for layout and the opened projects).

How to create a new workspace (not transferring the current settings) and switch to it:

  1. In menu File, select Switch Workspace and Other...

  2. In the dialog, enter the path for the new workspace. Click OK.
    Result:  Neuron Power Engineer is automatically closed and restarted. The new workspace is activated (with the default layout and without opened projects).

How to switch to an already existing workspace:

  • In menu File, select Switch Workspace and select the provided workspace in the list.

  • If the workspace is not provided, select Other... to enter/select the workspace in the dialog.
    (info) The dialog contains a list of the previously used workspaces (expand Recent Workspaces to see this list). It is also possible to click one of these workspaces in order to switch the workspace.