Entering information

There is no Edit button and no Save button. You open the value you want to change, change it, and press Enter.

Editing a field

Double-click the cell, or select it and press Enter, or right-click and choose Edit …. The cell turns into whatever editor the field needs, and what you get tells you something about the field.

A text field: the cell becomes a text box.

A text field: the cell becomes a text box.

A text field is a text box. A date is a calendar. A field with a fixed set of values — a status, Active, a type — is a list, and typing a new value is not an option: the list is the whole of what the field may hold, and that is the model keeping the data consistent.

A status field: a list of the values it may take, and nothing else.

A status field: a list of the values it may take, and nothing else.

Enter saves. It also confirms the highlighted choice in a list. Clicking elsewhere saves too. Esc abandons the edit and puts the old value back — so if you opened an editor by accident, Esc is the safe way out, not clicking into the next field.

A status list offers only the allowed next steps. Open Status (builder) on a revision and the list depends on where the revision is: from In Progress it offers Approved for Construction, from On hold it does not — you go through Under review and Approval from Class first. If the value you want is missing, it is not missing from the workspace; it is not allowed from here, and the route to it is one or two steps long.

One exception: text that can carry formatting. A comment’s Content opens a small editor with a toolbar — bold, lists, a link — and there Enter starts a new line. That editor has its own Save button (the disk icon at its top right), and a Cancel beside it. Nothing is stored until you press Save.

Picking a related record

A relationship — the area manager of a space, the cost code of a document, the recipients of a transmittal — is not typed. It is picked from the records that exist, so that one person is one record however many spaces they manage.

Right-click in the relationship block and choose Select … (Alt+S). A picker opens with every candidate and a search box over it; type part of a name, pick the row, confirm.

The picker: search, pick, confirm. Deselect (Alt+Shift+S) removes the link without touching either record.

The picker: search, pick, confirm. Deselect (Alt+Shift+S) removes the link without touching either record.

Two things follow. Deselect removes the link, not the record — the person still exists, they just no longer manage this space. And if the record you want is not in the picker, it does not exist yet — or it is Not in use; see below.

Read the notification

Every write answers, bottom right of the window, and it is worth reading rather than dismissing.

Green: written. The notice names what was updated.

Green: written. The notice names what was updated.

A green notice — Document updated — means the value is in the database. The name in it is the record kind, which is the check that you edited the thing you meant.

Red: nothing was written, and the message says why. Here: a document may have only one actual revision.

Red: nothing was written, and the message says why. Here: a document may have only one actual revision.

A red one means nothing was written. Not partly, not queued. The message is the rule that refused it — here, an attempt to make a second revision Actual while another still is. Fix the cause and do it again.

A refusal can look like a success

The cell you were editing may go on showing your value until the block reloads. If a red notice appeared, the value is not there — press ⟳ on the block and watch it revert before you move on.

Creating a record

Right-click in a grid → Create … (Alt+N) adds a row; fill its cells one by one. In a relationship block on a detail page, the new record is created and linked in one go — a new revision under this document, a new comment on this revision. Create a record where it belongs, and it belongs from the start.

Nothing gets deleted

Delete exists in the right-click menu. When it refuses — and on anything that other records point at, expect it to — that is not an obstacle to work around: it is the traceability the workspace is for. A drawing that was issued has to stay readable, and so does every comment and transmittal that refers to it.

The supported way to retire a record is Active → Not in use.

Active is a field like any other: In use or Not in use.

Active is a field like any other: In use or Not in use.

The record leaves the In use views, keeps every relationship it was part of, and stays findable on the Not in use tab. Reversible, too, which delete is not.

Persons → Not in use. He left in 2024; everything he signed still says so.

Persons → Not in use. He left in 2024; everything he signed still says so.

So “it is not in the list” has two meanings

Either it does not exist, or it is Not in use. Check the other tab before creating a second one — a duplicate of a retired record is much harder to clean up than the retirement was.

Refresh more than feels necessary

Shipbuilder shows you the data as it was when the block loaded. Somebody else’s change, an import, or your own change made in another tab do not reach the page on their own.

• ⟳ on a grid or a block reloads that one thing, and keeps your place.
• F5 reloads everything.

The history browser

Right-click a row → Browse history for …, or Alt+H.

The history of the fire control plan: what changed, when, and who did it.

The history of the fire control plan: what changed, when, and who did it.

Every change to that record is a row, with:

• Timestamp and Change type — create, and the updates after it;
• User, and User Type — which is how you tell a person’s edit from an import or a service writing in bulk;
• the record’s properties as they were at that moment, so a renamed record is still recognisable and the old value is still there.

This is the answer to “who changed this and when”, and it is faster than asking anybody. It is also why deleting is wrong: a deleted record has no history to browse.

The short version is on the record

Every record carries Created by / on and Modified by / on, kept by the application. They are on the detail page, under the attributes. A name there is a person; a code instead of a name means a service wrote it — an import, or the setup of this training.