Topic: DMD0387
Select Project
The Select Project dialog provides a convenient way to start a programming session by either opening an existing project or by creating a new project. Each time the Do-more Designer software starts it will automatically open the Select Project dialog, which contains a list of the projects that have been saved to Disk. As it opens, the Select Project dialog will check each project it adds to the list to see if the project has an associated link to a CPU. If it does, the dialog will check to see if the CPU is available, and will read some status information from that CPU.
Note: if you have a lot of projects, or if the CPUs are not currently accessible, this check of the CPU link status can take a long time. If the Select project has been working through the list of projects for more than 2 seconds, you will get a message box telling you that the process is taking a long time, and giving you the option of enabling the 'Minimal Link Info' which will speed up the process the next time the Select Project is opened.
Connect to PLC... opens the Select PLC Connection utility where you can select an existing PLC connection or create a connection for a new PLC .
New Offline Project... opens the first dialog of a series that will guide you through the process of creating a new project on disk.
Browse... opens a standard Windows browser dialog so that you can select a project that is not stored in the Default Projects Folder.
Restore Project from Backup... opens the Restore Project utility where a previously created backup copy of a project can be restored; that project is then opened in a Do-more Designer session.
Recent Project List contains an entry for each project that is in the Projects folder.
Project / Folder the name of the project and the folder where it is stored on disk. <Proj> indicates the project is located in the Default Projects Folder.
Last Opened is the date and time the project was last opened in Do-more Designer. By default, the projects in the is list are sorted into descending order by this column.
Last Saved is the date and time the project was last saved to disk in Do-more Designer.
Note: if the project file is accessed over a network using a UNC path, for example: "\\MyServer\MyProjects\MyFirstProject.dmd", the Last Opened and Last Saved information is not available, <unknown-UNC> will be displayed in these fields.
Link, Link Info, and Description fields will tell you which PLC Link was used to connect to the PLC if the If the project was online with a PLC when it was closed. If you open this project Do-more Designer will attempt to reconnect to the PLC using this link information.
PLC is the CPU type that was specified when the project was created.
Sorting Elements in the List can be done by clicking on a column heading once to sort the list by entries in that column - notice that a small triangle will appear to the right of that column heading. Click the column heading again will toggle between Sort in Ascending Order and Sort in Descending Order.
Open Selected Project will open the currently highlighted project.
Remove Project... (or Delete key) will prompt to remove the highlighted project from list and optionally delete the project's files from the drive.
Close will close the Select Project dialog without opening a project.
If Automatically show at launch is checked (the default) the Select Project will open a each time Do-more Designer is started. If unchecked it can be opened manually using the File -> Select Project menu selection as needed.
If Minimal Link Info is checked, any projects that have associated communication links to PLCs will NOT have those links tested when Select Project dialog starts up to see if the CPUs are accessible. Note: if the Select PLC Connection -> Auto-sense Connections at Startup option has been disabled, Minimal Link Info will be automatically enabled as well.
Do-more Designer Files
The following lists detail the files that are created by Do-more Designer for it's own use, as part of each project, or as part of working with some of the built-in utilities.
Each Project will contain files with the following extension:
.DMD contains all of the projects data, including the System Configuration, the ladder logic, and the documentation.
.DLO contains information about the layout of Do-more Designer.
.WSP contains the information about the on-screen location of Do-more Designer.
The following files and file extensions are used with some of the built-in utilities:
Image.Bin is the default file created by Create PLC Image File.
.DLI is the default file extension for files created by Do-more Loader.
.CSV is the default extension for files that contain tabular data that will be imported into or exported from Do-more Designer, for example Element Documentation, and data destined for HMIs.
.TXT is the default extension for files that contains ASCII text that will be imported into or exported from Do-more Designer, for example Rung Comments.
.DDT is the file extension for Data Views tat have been saved to disk.
.TRN is the file extension for Trend View layouts that have been saved to disk.
.TRARC is the file extension for data that has been archived to disk from a Trend View.
The following files are created by Do-more Designer for it's own use:
DmDesignerX_Y.INI contains startup settings and folder settings.
DmDComm.RST contains all of the information for all of the communication links created by this installation of Do-more Designer. This file can be copied to other installations of Do-more Designer to allow them to use the same communication link names.
DmOption.OPT contains the changes to the default display options and print options for this installation of Do-more Designer.
The following files are created by Do-more Designer for use by the Do-more Simulator:
DmSim.STATE contains the simulated volatile memory (RAM).
DmSim.FLASH contains the simulated non-volatile memory (ROM).
See Also: