Maintain Working Environment

The detailed maintenance of work environments differs significantly from quick load or export/import operations. Entire files are not copied and therefore no settings are overwritten. This is not suitable for normal work when one deliberately wants to retrieve only the settings currently needed. However, if one wants to inspect and maintain existing work environments, it is useful to be able to copy individual settings from the system into the work environment or vice versa.

To maintain work environments, expand the work level, locate the desired function level and expand that as well. You will now see all groups and settings of that function. Do this on both sides of the dialog box. On the left you always see the current settings from the program system and on the right the settings from the selected work environment.

For example, if you last loaded your work environment 'Massivbau' (solid construction), you will only find the wall variants for Massivbau on the left side. If you select the work environment 'Holzrahmenbau' (timber frame construction) on the right side (provided you have created one), you will there find only the wall variants for Holzrahmenbau.

Now you can mark the settings you want to copy from one side to the other and then click the corresponding directional arrow between the two trees. When marking, you can use the usual Windows keys. With the Ctrl key pressed you can mark any individual settings. With the Shift key pressed, all settings between the first and the last clicked setting are marked.

If the copied settings belong to a group (e.g. group 'Holzrahmenbau'), the settings retain their group when copied. In our example the group 'Holzrahmenbau' with the corresponding settings would therefore appear on the left side. The existing settings of the current system remain unaffected. We would now have wall variants for Massivbau and Holzrahmenbau in our program system. In the work environment 'Holzrahmenbau' the settings for the Holzrahmenbau wall variants remain preserved. Settings are always copied and not moved.

If a setting is marked as a favorite, this information is copied as well. Conflicts can occur, however, if the same favorite numbers were used on both sides. In this case the setting in the program system (left side) always retains the favorite and the setting copied from right to left loses its favorite designation.

In principle you can copy settings in both directions as described above. This also allows newly created settings that would be useful in an existing work environment to be copied from the system into the work environment via this method. The same can be done from within the individual function. For example, if you have created a single new setting in a function that you want to make available in other work environments, you do not need to call up the work environment data exchange. You can call the data exchange for the function and there select the directory of the work environment on the right side. To do this, click the large button 'Work Environments (DHPUGB)' at the top of the dialog box for path selection. The program then automatically jumps to that directory. There you only select the directory of the desired work environment and copy the new setting from the program system into the desired work environment.

Below the two tree elements there are three buttons that sometimes make the work a little easier. With the 'Select All' button you can expand all work levels and function levels of the tree and all settings will be selected with a single click. With the 'Delete' button you can delete the selected settings.

The 'Attach to Email' button is a special form of export. The program automatically packs all settings selected on the respective side into a file and generates an email in the program that is configured as the email client on the computer. The packed file is attached to that email and a text is inserted into the email explaining how to import the settings from there back into the program:

To import the data, please proceed as follows:

1. Save the attachment of this message to the desktop.

2. In Dietrich's program, open the dialog for which the settings are intended.

3. Open the settings management via the second button next to the setting.

You only need to enter the email address and expand the text accordingly so that the recipient knows who is sending the email and from which function the settings originate (in this case the work environment data exchange). If the recipient follows the instructions from the email, they can import the settings easily and with program support. On the next invocation of the function 'Work Environments -- Data Exchange' or 'Work Environment -- Load' the procedure for creating a new work environment is then started automatically. This allows changing the default name of the work environment and even importing only part of the work environment that was sent.