Quick Start

Welcome to the Quick Start section of the user documentation. Here, we'll show you how you can build an enterprise system maintaining a simple customer database, using easy commands within Visual Welder™.

To start, we'll create the customer maintenance section of the database.

Having installed Visual Welder™ and opened Visual Studio, click on the "Spatial Editor" icon to open the Spatial Editor window. This will initially appear plain black.
Right-click on this black background, and select "New Project". (Alternatively, click on the sembleWare™ menu, and select "Projects -> New Project".)
Push F4 to bring up the Properties window. Then right-click on the background of the Spatial Editor, and select "Project Properties" to display the project's properties in the Properties window. Change the Name property to "MyProject".
Expand the DatabaseSettings properties, set the appropriate properties to point to the desired SQL Server, and make the database name "MyDatabase". Also set the user name and password appropriately.
Now right-click on the background of the Spatial Editor again, and select "Fill -> Fill with New Part". You will see that a block is created in the middle of the editor, representing the new root part that has been created, called "NewPart".
Click on the grey "roof" or the blue "walls" of this part to bring it into focus in the editor. Using the Properties window, change its name to "ApplicationRoot". (See the documentation on Parts for more about what a root part is).
Next, we need to create a Customer part. So right-click on the part, and select "Add -> Add OwnMany". (See Holders for more about what you've just done.)
Click on this new cyan colored holder, and rename it from "OwnMany1" to "Customer". Then right-click it, and select "Fill -> Fill with New Part". This will create a grey block inside the holder.
Click on the grey block, representing the new part, to unsheathe it from the holder. Right-click it and select "Expand". Now you can see an expanded view of the Customer part.
Now we need to give some shape to the Customer. Let's just give the customer an identity and a name, for simplicity's sake. So right-click on the part and select "Add -> Add Element". Now, inside the part, you'll see that a new element called "NewElement1" has appeared on the grey panel on the back "wall".
Click on this element to focus the editor on it. Using the Properties window, rename it to "CustomerID", and set its ElementType property to "Identity". This will make CustomerID into an auto-numbering key field.
Repeat the process above to create a "CustomerName" element, only this time leave the element type as String.
Now we'll create ourselves a prototype to maintain our data. Right-click on the background of the Spatial Editor, and select "Generate -> Generate Prototype". You'll be prompted to generate the solution and to save the project. Select an appropriate folder, then sit back and watch Visual Welder™ do your work for you! (This may take a couple of minutes.)
Now, all that remains is to generate the database. Right-click on the Spatial Editor background again, then select "Database -> Generate Database". Assuming you have filled in a valid database server, username and password, You will be asked if you wish to create the new "MyProject" database; after this you will see the "Database Generation" dialog. Click "Create Script", then "Apply Script". Then "Close".
Click the normal Visual Studio "Run" button, and see your project running right away!

To see more about the time-saving features of Visual Welder™, see The 3 Biggest Time Savers.

For a full, step-by-step tutorial of how to build a complete, working system, see Tutorial.