wiki:Manual/Workspace/Creating

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Creating and managing workspaces

Every time the SEAMCAT is launched, it opens in a blank mode with only Library control and some other general menu tools active. Therefore, the first step for the user before any actual simulation work with SEAMCAT could be started is to create a new workspace or open some previously created. This is done by selecting menu option File/New? Workspace or File/Open? Workspace. Naturally, for using the latter option you have to have some previously created SEAMCAT-3 workspaces saved on your disk.

When a new workspace is created, initially it will be assigned a name automatically following default conventions, e.g. 'New Workspace_XX', where XX stands for serial number of newly created workspace. The user may change the workspace name any time afterwards by going to the tree view and pressing on the workspace name once, and after pause, once again, similarly as you would select and edit file names in Windows Explorer.

Note that differently from previous release SEAMCAT-2, the SEAMCAT-3 allows having several workspaces open at the same time. However this requires from the user extra attention in terms of always checking which of the open workspaces is being modified at a given time. Also the graphical information is lost when the user moves from one active workspace to another. Therefore it is not normally recommended to have more than one workspace open, unless the user is very comfortable with the programme and e.g. wants to have several workspaces open for quick comparison or similar purposes.

When SEAMCAT window is closed without previously saving/closing workspace, the user will be prompted whether any changes to the workspace should be saved. Therefore any SEAMCAT-3 workspace that is intended for future work shall be saved as a separate file, which by itself also constitutes the shareable object, i.e. copies of the workspace file may be shared between SEAMCAT users wishing to discuss a particular scenario. This approach of saving workspaces as separate files is different from SEAMCAT-2 where all workspaces were kept as a part of an internal database, and if the user wanted to share scenario with others, this had to be done via Scenario export function.

The SEAMCAT-3 workspace files are saved with distinctive extension 'sws' and by default are placed within the Workspaces sub-folder of Seamcat folder, of which location was specified by the user during the first installation of SEAMCAT-3.

Note that technical library management functions are available regardless of whether a simulation workspace has been loaded or not.