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Adapting BW to your needs



Every time BW starts up or you open a new project, BW draws a new empty weaving in the main dialog. The information used to build this initial weaving comes from preferences.
Preferences is a small set of data, saved on disk, that you can change to adapt BW to your needs.


Preferences

To change your preferences click menu Edit/Preferences...

BW will display the preferences dialog:


The preferences dialog

The preferences values and their meaning are explained below:

Number of warp and weft threads
These are the numbers of warp and weft threads that BW will create when opening a new project.
Note that the number of threads can be altered later (see Adding & removing threads).


Warp and weft default color
BW will assign these colors to warp and weft threads when opening a new project.
To change the default color just double click the appropriate color rectangle and BW will open the following dialog:


The default color dialog

Click one of the palette colors to select it and click OK.


Number of shafts (harness)
This is the number of shafts (harness frames) BW will create when opening a new project.


Rising shed (Yes/No)
When acting upon the treadles to form the shed, some looms rise the shafts (rising shed)  while other lower the shafts (sinking shed). 
Rising shed means weft picks pass below the risen warp ends. 
Sinking shed means weft picks pass above the sunken warp ends.
 
Click the appropriate option button to reflect the shed movement type of your loom.


Number of treadles
This is the number of treadles BW will create when opening a new project.


Max visible Rows (Harness)/Columns (Treadles)
When creating projects with a large number of shafts and treadles, the screen area dedicated to the drawdown may become small. BW will allow you to reduce the number of displayed harness rows (shafts) and treadle columns in order to increase the available drawdown area.

Let's say your weaving project has 32 shafts and 32 treadles but, to make room for the drawdown area, you decided to show only 8 shafts and 8 treadles. In this case BW will reduce the harness and treadles areas and will add two little scroll bars to the main dialog as shown below:

   
The harness and treadling scroll bars

These scroll bars will allow you to reach all harness or treadle cells and the true row and column information will be shown in the bar.
When working with threading and treadling patterns, it's better to make all shafts and treadles visible in order to avoid wrong (and confusing) results due to not marked hidden cells.


Pictures cell size
This is the cell size BW will use when opening a new project.


Standard palette colors
Click the Edit button to open the standard palette editor.  
See Working wit colors for further details on editing colors.


History (undo) list entries
This is the number of entries BW will keep in the history list.
For details see Undoing changes.


Working dir
This is the folder (directory) BW will use when opening or saving files.
To change it, click the "..." button and BW will show you the Browse for folder dialog:


The browse for folder dialog

Select your working folder, and click OK.
To save a file in a different folder or with a different name, click menu Weaving/Save As... and BW will open a Save As dialog allowing you to choose a different folder or file name.
After saving a file with Save As, the selected folder becomes the working folder, but the Working dir in preferences is not changed and will be restored next time you open a new project.



Notes

1) After changing preferences, some values will be immediately applied to the current weaving. Others will be active when you open the next new project.

Values applied immediately:
    Warp and weft default colors
    Rising or sinking shed
    Maximum visible shafts and treadles
    Cell size
    Working folder

Values active on next new project:
    Number of warp and weft threads
    Number of shafts (harness)
    Number of treadles
    Number of history list entries


2) When opening an existing WIF file, BW uses the number of threads, shafts, treadles, colors, etc... contained in the WIF file. The preferences values used for both new and existing files are:

    Maximum visible shafts and treadles,
    Cell size,
    Working folder and
    Number of history list entries







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