Keep up to five projects open in one Trace window. Each project keeps its own chats and tabs, so you can put one design aside, work on another and come back to find everything as you left it. The assistant can also read your other open projects and copy a schematic sheet from one to another.
New in Trace 3.2. This page is about the Trace app; the Trace Plugin works on the project open in your design tool.
Open another project
- With a project already open, open another one the usual way: File > Open Project... (Ctrl+O, Cmd+O on Mac), File > New Project... or Open in Trace in Workspaces.
- The new project comes to the front. The project you were working on moves behind it and keeps its unsaved changes and undo history.
- The Open Projects list in the sidebar shows every open project and how many of the five are in use, such as 2/5.
Each project has its own colour in the list, and its tabs carry a bar in the same colour, so you can tell at a glance which project a tab belongs to.
Opening a project that is already open brings it to the front instead of opening it twice.
Bring a project to the front
Click the project's name in Open Projects. You get back its chats and its tabs as you left them, with the document you last looked at in front. Its Mechanical, Simulation and Component Editor tabs come back with the same case, run or part.
While the assistant is working, Trace keeps you in the project it is working in and says: The agent is still working. Switch projects when it's done, or stop it first. Wait for the reply to finish, or press Stop in the chat, then switch.
What each project keeps
| Each project has its own | Shared by the whole window |
|---|---|
| Chats, with their questions, review cards, undo and layout runs | Workspaces and the Artifacts Store, which show the project in front |
| Document tabs: schematics, boards, 3D views | Preferences and your account |
| One Mechanical, one Simulation and one Component Editor tab | |
| Unsaved changes and undo history |
Open a sixth project
Trace keeps up to five projects open at a time. If you open a sixth, Trace tells you which five are open:
Trace keeps up to 5 projects open at a time. Close one of them to open 'name':
Nothing is closed for you. Close a project you are done with, then open the new one.
Chats in several projects
- Each chat belongs to the project it was started in. Bring another project to the front and the chat panel shows that project's conversations.
- Several chats can work at the same time in the project in front. A question or review card from a chat you are not looking at waits in that chat until you open it.
- For now, the assistant works in one project at a time. If a chat in one project is busy and you send a message from a chat that belongs to another project, your message stays in the box and the chat says why: This chat works in A, but B is in front and another chat is working there. Wait for it, or start a new chat for B.
- A chat whose project is closed is read-only. Open its project again to carry on, or start a new chat.
Start from a project's start page
When a project has no document open, its start page asks What should Trace do in this project? Type your request and press Start (Cmd+Return on Mac, Ctrl+Enter on Windows and Linux). Trace sends it to the assistant in that project's chat.
Let the assistant work across projects
The assistant can:
- read any of your open projects, for example to compare two designs or reuse a circuit;
- switch to another open project's schematic or board;
- copy or move a schematic sheet from one project to another. It places the sheet in free space on the page and renumbers only the parts whose references clash with ones already in the project.
For example: Copy the power supply sheet from SensorBoard into this project. Check the copied sheet and run ERC before you carry on.
Team projects side by side
Team projects from Workspaces can be open side by side, each with its own working copy. In Workspaces, a project that is open behind another one shows Bring to front instead of Open in Trace. Switching branches keeps the project where it is in the list while the files download.
Close a project
- Hover over the project in Open Projects and click the × (Close this project), or
- choose File > Close Project to close the project in front. The next open project comes forward.
Closing a project closes its tabs. If a document has unsaved changes, Trace asks whether to save it. If the assistant is working in the project, Trace asks first and offers Stop Agent and Continue or Cancel.
When you start Trace again
The projects you had open reopen the next time you start Trace, with the one you had in front.
Open files from Finder
On a Mac, double-clicking a schematic or board in Finder opens it in its project's window, with that sheet or board in front, so the assistant can reach the rest of the design. See Workbench.