The LumiCode Project

Your diagrams and reports are all saved in the LumiCode project. The projects are self contained, so the assemblies they document need not be present when viewed. This allows a documentation project to be distributed, viewed and edited without distributing assemblies.

A LumiCode project file has the extension: .lcproj.

Starting a new project

1. Under the File menu, click New Project to begin.

Editing the project contents

1. When you create a new project, the Project Editor dialog will open automatically. To add or remove assemblies from an existing project, under the Project menu, click Edit Project.

2. Click Select. In the Assembly Source Directory dialog, click Browse to select the directory that contains your project's assemblies, and then click OK. Alternately, you can type or paste project paths directly into the text box.

3. Click OK to exit the Assembly Source Directory dialog.

4. All the assemblies from the directory will appear in a list. Check the assemblies you want to examine with LumiCode.

   

5. Click Load. You are now ready to begin adding diagrams and reports to your project.

Saving a project

1. Under the File menu, click Save Project. All your diagrams and reports will be saved.

Refreshing a project

When you open a new project, LumiCode takes a snapshot of the assemblies you have chosen.  You can save your project and reopen it and you will still be working from the same snapshot.

Refreshing the project will take a new snapshot that will reflect changes you have made to your code since the last snapshot.

To refresh a project, the assemblies must be available at the project's assembly source path.

1. Under the Project menu, click Refresh.

When you refresh a project, newly added entities will be available for you to select and add to your diagrams and reports. Items that no longer exist in the assemblies, but were previously added to your diagrams and reports will be removed.

Refresh does the best it can, and will usually work fine. However, there are times when the exact changes to call sequences cannot be determined from the available information. It's good to always inspect your diagrams to make sure they still show what you intended.

External references

When you use the Auto Select Bar, classes and methods that are not in your project may be added to your diagram. For example: your class may inherit from a system class, or your method may call a system method. These external entities will be on your diagram, but they are different in two ways:

1. They will not be on the class tree or method tree, so the only way to remove them is by selecting them and using the delete key on your keyboard.

2. There is less information available about them, so you cannot add the methods and fields for a class, or the parameters and return value for a method.