Starting a New Project

<< Click to Display Table of Contents >>

Navigation:  Training Manual >

Starting a New Project

Training Manual

In this section we will see how to:

Create a new project from scratch and enter main parameters.

Use project administration functions; open, save, save as, delete.  

Create project organization in folder structure.

Step 1: Start MassTrack

Double-click the MassTrack icon from your desktop to launch the program. The first thing that pops up is the Login window:

 

clip0040

Make sure to select Windows as Authentication method and leave the SQL Server to default. The User Name is not your Windows user name, but your MassTrack user name. Fill in the corresponding Password.

The System droplist should bet set to the default value. Open Last Project check box should not be checked. Click OK button to launch MassTrack.

MassTrack window will open, with no project loaded:

clip0041

Step 2: Start a new project

Go to the Project menu and select New or go to the toolbar and click the new button clip0042

The Project info window pops up:

clip0043

There is two mandatory fields in the Project info window that needs to be filled out:

The project Database ID* is the place where to store the new project, so you can select an already existing database from the dropdown list or type in a new database id. For this tutorial, please select ProjectDB.

clip0044

The Project ID* is the id of your project, and the user can type anything as long as it is unique. For this tutorial, please type Tutorial.

clip0045

Name field: MS Breeze

Main Type field: select Offshore Vessel from the dropdown list.

Type field: select Anchor Handling Tug from the dropdown list.

The Frame Spacing field: is a bit important because this will allow to include frame spacing in the input and use frame spacing instead of position, when the user enters the position for location of an item in the X direction.

Example:  - for frame spacing of 0.65 meters, simply type 0.65#

                - for dynamic frame spacing, type for example 0.65#25;0.7#90;0.6#

                   The tooltip here will show an example of the coding for this dynamic  

                   frame spacing:

                  clip0046

 

For more information, press the F1 keyboard button, which will launch the Context-sensitive Help File:

clip0047

 

Units field: keep the Metric units.

clip0048

Click OK and the new project will start.

clip0049

Now, the user will be asked to choose the main weight group for the new project. In this case keep the DISP Displacement selection and then press OK.

The next window that pops up is the Parameters window:

clip0050

 

Expand the window and enter the main parameters that are currently available for the project:

clip0051

Notice that some of the parameters have a green icon to the right of the Value cell. For example the Block-coefficient. If the user knows the block-coefficient value, he can just type in directly.

If the block-coefficient is unknown, the green icon will open the Composite Parameter window, which will allow the user to enter other parameters to help calculate the block-coefficient value. Input 7700 for Displacement [t] field, and then let the rest of the parameters as they are. The Block-coefficient will instantly be calculated:

clip0052

Press the Close button.

 

clip0053

Now click OK to close this window.

The Project Info can be found on the top right side of MassTrack window and the Parameters info on the lower right side. The information can be changed anytime when working with the project, by clicking on the Project Info and on the Parameters headers.

clip0054

 

Step 3: Open and Save a Project Copy

Start again MassTrack and login:

clip0055

to open up the main window:

clip0056

Right now MassTrack opens without any project loaded into the main window. To load a project into the main window you can either open a project from the menu, going on Project -> Open or you can go to the toolbar and find the Open Project button clip0057. Either way you choose, the Open Project window will pop up:

clip0058

The upper part shows the name of the Server, which usually stays the same, you rarely change the server name.

The next part will show the Database, the project databases that are on your server. You need to have at least one project Database. Each project database can contain any number of projects.

Now click on the lower part of the project Database, for example click on SW00_ProjectDB. You will see in the lower part of the Project ID all the existing projects from the selected Database:

clip0059

Now, select from the Project ID list the Tutorial project and then click OK to open up this project, and then after few seconds the project is loaded into MassTrack:

clip0060

To make a copy of this project, go to Project menu, then select Save As…

Choose the Database you want to save it in (ProjectDB) and then type the Project ID to be used for the copy of the existing project:

clip0061

Now hit the OK button and a copy of Tutorial project is stored as Tutorial_Rev1.

To get back to Tutorial project, you can open it from the Open window, but also on the project menu there are some shortcuts that shows the last four projects:

clip0062

This is how you can open and save projects on MassTrack.

Step 4: Setting up a Catalogue Level in MassTrack

In MassTrack 13 a catalogue level is introduced to make it easier to organize project.

Open the “Open Project” window (from menu Project->Open…) and select the Browse […] button marked in red in the picture below.

clip0063

 

Select a database, right-click to select “New Folder” and type in a folder name of your choice.

clip0064

 

clip0065

Continue in the same manner to create more folders and subfolders until you have the desired catalogue structure.

 

Move and organize projects into folders by selecting project IDs and “drag and drop” with the mouse into appropriate folder.

clip0066
 

Select a project and click the “OK” button.  Your project should now appear (and be selected) with the catalogue structure made for the projects in the database. Repeat for other databases.

clip0067

Step 5: Deleting a Project

To delete a project, navigate to Project menu, select Delete, then Delete Project:

clip0068

The Delete project… window will appear, which contains the same, the Server, Database and Project ID.

clip0069

Select the Database SW00_ProjectDB, and the Project ID Tutorial_Rev1:

clip0070

Click OK to delete it.

The Extra “Save As…” Options

clip0071

 

“Copy Log” – check this to copy the log data from the existing project and to the new one

“Copy Permissions”- if this box is checked, the permission settings for user-groups for this project should be copied to the new project so there is no need to set new permissions.

“Freeze current”  should set all user-groups to be “Read-only” in the project you are saving from.

“Delete workset” – when you start a new revision and you want to start with a clean set of worksets.