Projects are folders that are named by the user when they create the project. Contractors tend to use the site address as the project name. Project folders contain, amongst other things, a project.sdf file. This is a database and is updated each time data is added to Viewline. This is transportable and Viewline can access any project that has this database. So, any PC that has Viewline installed and licensed will be able to open a project that contains the project.sdf.
Although backing up projects to remote drives is recommended, we strongly suggest you don’t try to open a Viewline project from a remote drive. This is likely to cause problems and may result in a corrupt database. Save all projects locally and then back up or sync to a remote drive regularly.
Creating a Project
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When the Viewline programme loads, select ‘New Project’ from the file menu in the top left-hand corner.
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A dialogue box will appear, provide a project name.
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In the pop up menu either create a folder to save your projects or if you have already created a folder, then this will be highlighted. Click OK and your project folder will be saved.
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At this point you will see the Project Manager.
To emphasise the previous note on saving projects. We do not recommend saving projects to NAS drives or any form of external drive including cloud drives and we do not recommended working on projects located in remote locations. This includes working on or saving to a syncing One Drive. The reason is because Viewline parses data to and from a database. If that database is located remotely and there is some form of interruption it is likely the database will become corrupt and you might lose your data. Backing up and syncing data is recommended but save your projects locally to the PC that the Viewline application is on. You can then sync external folders to this.
The Project Manager
You need to have a project open to see Project Manager. The first thing you will want to do is complete the Contractor Manager. Click on Contractor Manager and add your company details as a new contractor. You can also add your company logo, via add logo, which will appear on every page of your finished reports (top left). The optimum dimensions for a logo are are 900 x 200 pixels and the accepted formats are bmp, jpg and png. You can also add a training certificate, which will form part of the report output. Once you have saved yourself as a new contractor then you can delete the dummy contractor that we created.
Once you have added yourself as a contractor you will not need to do this again. This will be remembered as default.
The Project Manager will open each time you create a new project and this will enable to add site details, client details and report cover page images.
Because we recognise it is probable that you may have regular clients, possibly sites we provide the ability to import from previous projects. This works by clicking the Import button and navigating to a previous project and clicking on the .v55 file. This will then import the site or client details.
It is also possible that the client and the site are the same, for example when you are working on a residential property. In this case then you can use the Copy from Site or Copy from Client buttons.
If your project is very large and Viewline can handle up to 200 sections (we recommend you keep projects at more manageable sizes though). You can use the Compress Project button, which will reduce the overall size and help with loading times.