Datasheet

Chapter 1: Introduction to the IDE
13
Developer. When you save a project, the “Developer” part of the location would be replaced with your
user name.
Be sure to pick a good location before you click Save. The next time you build a project, the default will
be the location you specify now so you won’t need to be quite as careful in the future, assuming you
want to build a lot of projects inside the same directory.
If you check the “Create directory for solution” box, Visual Studio enables the Solution Name text box
and adds an extra directory above the project directory to hold the solution. This is most useful when
you want to include more than one project in a single solution.
For example, suppose you are building a graphical office furniture layout tool — a CAD system for
arranging desks and chairs. You want the solution to include an executable main project and a drawing
tool DLL project. In that case, you could name the solution OfficeArranger and call the executable project
OfficeArrangerMain. Visual Studio would make a directory named OfficeArranger and place the execut-
able project inside a subdirectory named OfficeArrangerMain. Later you could add a DLL project called
OfficeArrangerTools to the solution and place it also inside the OfficeArranger solution directory.
After you have entered the project name and location, and optionally specified a separate solution
directory, click Save.
The File menu’s Save As commands let you save particular pieces of the solution in new files. For exam-
ple, if you have a project named OfficeArrangerMain selected in Project Explorer, then the File menu
contains a command named “Save OfficeArrangerMain As.” This command lets you save the project
file with a new name. Unfortunately it doesn’t make a new copy of the whole project; it just makes a
copy of the project file. That file contains information about the project on a high level such as references
used by the project, files imported by the project, and the names of the forms included in the project. It
does not contain the forms themselves.
Many beginners try to use the File menu’s Save As commands to make copies of a project or a solution
but it doesn’t work. Instead, use Windows Explorer to find the directory containing the whole project or
solution and make a copy of the entire directory.
Summary
This chapter explained how to get started using the Visual Studio integrated development environment.
It tells how to configure the IDE for different kinds of development and explains that different configura-
tions might make your version of Visual Studio look different from the screen shots shown in this book.
It explains what Visual Basic projects and solutions are, and shows how to create, run, and save a new
project.
The next few chapters describe parts of the IDE in greater detail. Chapter 2 , “Menus, Toolbars, and
Windows,” describes the commands available in the IDE and the menus, toolbars, and secondary windows
that hold them.
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