3.11 The Project Panel

FEBio Studio offers a multi-document interface, where at any given time, multiple FEBio models, plot files, and other documents, can be open. Typically, all these open documents have some relation to each other. For instance, a single FEBio model and multiple plot files can be open at the same time, where each plot file shows the results of a parameter study. To help manage and keep track of documents that somehow belong together, the user can create an FEBio Studio project.

FEBio Studio will always maintain an active project in the background that keeps tracks of all the files that are currently open and have been opened in the current FEBio Studio session. The status of this project can be inspected on the Project panel. The Project panel is divided into two panes. The top pane shows a tree view of the current files in the project. At the bottom of the Project panel is a Notes pane. Here, users can add notes and comments to the currently selected item in the project tree.

The project tree is split into two main branches:

Open Files shows all the files that are currently open in FEBio Studio. Double-clicking a file in the Open Files list will activate the corresponding tab.

Project shows all the files in the project.

Users can further customize the project in several ways. Right-clicking on the PROJECT item allows the user to do the following operations.

Save Project as Save the project to a file. (More on this below)

Create Group Create a new group (a new branch in the project tree) that can be used to group certain files together.

Close Project Close the current project and start a new empty project.

Clear Project Clears the current project. This may lead to loss of data since projects are automatically saved. If the current project is stored as a file, this will overwrite the file with an empty project.

Add File Add a file to the project. Note that any file can be added. It doesn't have to be a file that can actually be opened in FEBio Studio. For instance, you can keep a Word document in the project that contains additional project details.

Import Folder Adds files from a user-specified folder to the project. Only files with the following extensions will be imported: fsm, fs2, feb, xplt.

The active project can be saved to a file using either the menu File → Save Project as... or by right-clicking the PROJECT item on the Project panel. Once a project is saved, FEBio Studio will automatically ensure that any changes to the project (e.g. by loading files) will be reflected in the file. There is no need to save the project again. The project file itself is a standard xml file and can be viewed and edited with any text editor.