Starting Astade the first time

When you start Astade the first time, you should select a folder, where your model will be located. Astade stores its model in a folder, creating lots of files and subfolders there. So you create a new, empty folder and let Astade create a new, empty model there.

When you did this, Astade should look like this:

You can see the folder, where Astade will place all the model elements. In near future the content of that folder will grow, at the moment it contains only one file named “ModelNode.ini”.

Astade places a file with this name in every folder and subfolder. It stores internal informations here. But you should not care to much, what Astade does inside its model folder. Normally you won't have to changes things here.

Astade remembers the model folder, when its started the next time. So as long you work only with one model (and that should be for at least the whole tutorial) there is no need to change the model folder.

Let us create two additional model elements now, before finishing this first tutorial. We need a “components” folder, where we'll place the components (the programs) for this tutorial. And we need a “package” folder, where we place the classes (the source) for this tutorial.

First rightclick on the astade model and select “add component folder” in the context menu.

Than rightclick on the new created components folder and select “features” to change the features of this model tree entry.

In the feature dialog you change the name of the tree entry to “tutorials”.

Always fill something into the description field. Even if everything seems to be obvious to you. At the moment you create a model element, you normally remember, why you do this. This is a good moment to write it down. If you later come across this element and don't remember, why you created it, you can look it up

Rightclick on the Astade model tree again and create a new package.

Than change the features of this initial package.
You should end up, with this layout:

There are two preference dialogs, where you should have a look into. When you select “Preferences!→“Set Directories..” you get the dialog with all default Astade service programs. The main Astade program is only responsible for diaplaying the model tree. All other work is done by command line programs in background. In this dialog you can configure, which programs Astade shall use.

Normally the default should work fine for you. But there are some fields you might want to change:

1. Code Editor: here you can select you favorite code editor
2. Editor line option: here you configure the command line option, your editor needs, to open a file directly in a certain line. Astade needs this, to jump directly into a certain line, when you rightklick on a compiler error message.
3. Template path: here you select the default path, where Astade searchs for Makefile templates. Astade comes with some Makefile templates you might want to use, but maybe you will have your own ones and than change this directory.
4. Sound after make: If you work in big projects, make might run serveral minutes. If you are one of this people who go and surf in the internet, while the make runs in background, you might want Astade to play a sound, whenever make finishes. So you can notice and get back to work

The second preference dialog you find in “Preferences!→“Set Regular Expressions…”

Here you configure 3 regular expressions. Astade uses them to find the filename and line number into the compiler output. If you use GCC in english, the default is ok for you. But if you use another compiler, or GCC in another language (e.g. German, like in the screenshot) than you must adjust thease regular expressions.

You should be able to do now:

• Create a new Astade model
• Create a components folder
• Create a package
• Set the preferences for your personal needs