Create a project

The corner-stone of everything you do in the LLBLGen Pro designer is the Project. This tutorial will guide you through creating a project in the LLBLGen Pro designer. This tutorial uses the designer as a stand-alone application. You can also create a new project within Visual Studio. To do so, add a new 'LLBLGen Pro project' file to your solution within Visual Studio. The steps to follow are roughly the same, except the menus referred to below are in the 'LLBLGen Pro' menu in the Visual Studio menu.

Creating and saving a project

  • Start the LLBLGen Pro designer. Either use the Programs start menu, Windows search or double click the LLBLGenPro.exe in the installation folder to start the LLBLGen Pro designer.
  • For this tutorial we'll create the new project from within the main Designer window, as we want to examine the preferences beforehand. So when the LLBLGen Pro designer startup dialog appears, click 'Open an empty designer'.
  • As a new project derives its settings from default settings in the LLBLGen Pro Designer Preferences, it's a good idea to first examine these whether they're set to your liking. You can change them in the Project settings later on if you like. To do this, go to File -> Preferences, and in the tree at the left, examine the settings for the elements under New Project Defaults. In most cases the defaults are fine to get started with. When you're OK with the defaults, click OK.
  • Select File -> New Project... or press Ctrl-N. The Create New Project dialog opens.
  • Specify the name of the project, e.g. Northwind, and the name of the creator of the project, which is normally the user's name or the name of the organisation / deparment creating / owning the project. Check if the Location textbox indeed points to the folder you normally would want to save the project file to. If not, click the [...] button next to the Location textbox to select a different folder.
  • Select as target framework one of the Entity Framework frameworks you want to use, e.g. Entity Framework 6. You can switch at any time later on.
  • For this tutorial series, select 'Empty project' for Initial contents.
  • Check the checkbox 'Verify project settings after project creation' so we'll be offered the project settings right after the project has been created.
  • Click the OK button. The designer creates a default, empty project for you with Project Settings derived from the designer Preferences.
  • Save the project, by select from the menu File->Save Project... or by pressing Ctrl-S or by clicking the Save button in the toolbar.

Examining settings

After the project has been created, the designer will open the project settings dialog. Please check the project settings for the target framework you 've chosen. To do this, follow these steps:

  • In the tree on the left, navigate to: Conventions->Entity Model->Entity Framework and click it.
  • On the right, the settings available for your target framework are shown. LLBLGen Pro works with defaults which allow you to define values for all elements at once. For more information about these settings, see Available Output Settings.

Next step

The next step is creating entities by using the designer's model first technologies. There are two tutorials to choose from: