Designer Preferences

The LLBLGen Pro designer is controllable through various preferences. These preferences are editable through the Designer Preferences Editor. To open this editor, click File -> Preferences. The meaning of each preference setting is described below. It's highly recommended you examine the various preferences before you create a new project as a new project inherits many of the preferences available.

New Project Defaults

The preferences are divided in two parts: Designer Behavior and New Project Defaults. The Designer Behavior preferences are described below. The New Project Defaults are equal to the Project Settings they're the default for, and are documented there. A new project inherits most of its setting values from the New Project Defaults: all settings in the Project Settings which are also mentioned in the list of settings under New Project Defaults are inheriting their initial value from the New Project Defaults value.

Important!

In versions prior to v5.0 the Designer Preferences in the designer contained values which were used in the Project Settings as well, if their equivalent in the Project Settings was set to the value Default. Most of the catalog refresher settings were of this type as well as some model first settings.

These settings all have been converted to regular bool settings in the project settings and no longer rely on the preference value. When a project is loaded which is saved by a previous version of llblgen pro the values in the project are set after the preferences value like they would be in-effect during the previous versions.

Designer Behavior

Additional plugins folder: The additional plug-ins folder to load plug-ins from. This can be an absolute path, or a relative path to the .exe startup folder.
Additional tasks folder: The additional tasks folder to load tasks and related files from. This is an absolute path. The designer will search this folder for *.tasks/*.platform/*.presets files
Additional templates folder: The additional templates folder to load templates from. This is an absolute path. The designer will search this folder for templateGroups.config/*.language/*.templatebindings/*.frameworksettings files
Confirm designer close: When set to true, the user has to confirm a closure of the LLBLGen Pro designer
Create backup before import: Similar to CreateBackupBeforeRelationalModelDataSync. True by default, it creates a backup before the user imports data into the actual project, as importing a model is non-undoable. The backup makes it possible to revert to a project state before the import action.
Create backup before running plugin: When set to true (default), a backup of the current project is created before you run a plugin. It is recommended you leave this setting set to true.
Default backup folder: The default backup folder in which LLBLGen Pro will create backups of the project loaded, for example before when a relational model data sync task is performed. Specify the folder with full path or if you want to make the path relative to the project location, specify the path as a relative path. A relative path starts with .\ or with ..\. If you leave this preference empty, the default, the folder the project file is located in, is used.
Expand group nodes on project load: True by default. When set to false, group nodes are not expanded in the project explorer after the project has been loaded.
Hide foreign key fields in editor: When set to true, the designer will hide foreign key fields in field editors using a filter (which is editable). When set to false (default) all fields are shown by default in the field editors.
Keep home tab open after project load: If true (default), the designer will keep the home tab open after a project has been loaded, otherwise it's closed.
Open newly created project element in editor: When set to true (default) a newly created element, like an entity or a typed list, is opened in its editor right after it's been created. Only in effect when a single element is created.
Preferred project folder: This is the preferred folder to store new projects in and it will be the initial folder to open when you select to load an existing project.
Project explorer open element on double click: When set to true, double-clicking an element node (entity / typed list / typed view / stored procedure call) will also open the element in its editor. The element's node is also expanded/collapsed. When set to false, double-clicking a node in the tree will just expand/collapse the node.
Search query default language: The .NET language to pre-select in the Element Search dialog.
Show home tab on startup: If true (default), the designer will show the home tab with the quick start guides at startup.
Show post ddl sql export selector after ddl sql export: If true (default), the designer will show a window with follow-up actions what to do with the exported DDL SQL script.
Use current culture for name sorting: When set to true (default), all name sorting will be done using the current culture setting of the operating system, which is the default of Linq OrderBy. If set to false, name sorting will use the invariant culture. Name sorting is used both during code generation (ordering of e.g. field names) as well as ordering of elements in the project file on disk. The value 'True' will give you the behavior of previous versions of LLBLGen Pro.
Verbose application output: When set to true, the application output window's verbose setting will be set to true at application startup.

Designer behavior, sync relational model data

Create backup before relational model data sync: When set to true, LLBLGen Pro will backup your current project before the first sync task for Relational Model Data Synchronization is started. This is the default and recommended setting.
Show report after relational model data sync: When set to true, the designer will show a report after the Relational Model Data Synchronization tasks has been completed with the changes it could detect. It's recommended to have this option set to true.

Designer behavior, Sync relational model data, database first

Driver command timeout: The value of this setting controls the timeout value of the ADO.NET commands used to retrieve relational model data from the database when a project is created or when a relational model data synchronization task with an external database has been completed. Specified in seconds. Not used with Firebird as Firebird doesn't support command timeouts.

Designer behavior, Sync relational model data, model first

Ask for ddl sql export after model sync: If set to true (default), the designer will ask whether the changes made to the relational model data have to be exported as a DDL SQL script after a successful model sync.

Task performers

Always load lpt source code: When set to true, after each code generation cycle, the .lpt template runner sourcecode (if any) is opened in the text editor. The sourcecode is always opened if there are errors detected during template compilation. Default is false
Show report after code generation: When set to true (default), LLBLGen Pro will show the report in a modal dialog as logged by the task performers executed during code generation. The report can be copied to the clipboard, with formatting, if desired.

Text Editor

Text editor font: The font to use in the text editor, which is used for editing template files and other text-based files opened in the designer
Vsnet xsd folder: The folder where VS.NET stores the .xsd files for intellisense on xml based files
Word wrap: When set to true, word-wrap is enabled in text editors opened in the designer. Default is false