The Project Explorer provides you with an organized view of your projects and their files as well as quick access to the commands that pertain to them. A toolbar associated with this window offers commonly used commands for the item you highlight in the list. To access Project Explorer select Project Explorer on the View menu.

## About Solutions and Projects

A solution is a collections of projects, and all projects are contained in solutions. Organising your projects into a solution allows you to build all the projects in a solution with a single keystroke, load them onto the target with another, ready for debugging.

## Creating a New Project

When you run CrosstStudio for the first time, no projects exist. To create a new project, select New | New Project from the File menu, and a dialog appears. From this, you can select the type of project you wish to create and where it will be placed. Once complete, the project explorer displays the new solution, project, and files of the project. To add another project to the solution, just repeat the same steps.

Most of your work will be focused around the project explorer, so you'll need to know how it works.

## Adding New Files to a Project

To add new files to a project, simply select the project you wish to add files to in the project explorer, then select Add New Item from the File menu. This will bring up a dialog allowing you to choose the type of file to add, its filename, and where it will be stored.

## Adding Existing Files to a Project

To add new files to a project, simply select the project you wish to add files to in the project explorer, then select Add Existing Item from the File menu. This will bring up a file chooser so you can choose the files that you want added.

## Setting Project Properties

When you select an item in the project explorer, the properties window changes to display the properties that can be set for the item. This allows you to set compilation options for source files, for instance.

## Opening Files for Editing

Double-clicking on a source file in the solution will load it into the code editor for editing. As you switch between files in the editor, the selection in the project explorer changes to highlight the file that you're currently editing.

## Removing Items from the Solution

You can remove whole projects, folders, or files from the solution using the Remove tool button on the project explorer's toolbar. Removing a source file from the solution does not remove it from disk, so you can always add it back to the solution later.

## Building the Solution

To build the solution, select Build Solution from the Project menu, or press F7. This will perform the steps that are necessary to build all the projects in the solution. The progress of the build is displayed in the Build tab of the Output Window. You can build individual projects or the whole solution by right-clicking on the project or solution in the project explorer and selecting the appropriate action from the popup menu.