Using the plant mover

The plant mover is a tool for managing plants within plant files. It has two sides: the left side and the right side. For each side of the plant mover, the top of the window shows the name of the plant file open on that side. The pencil next to the file name shows whether you have made any changes to the file. Under each file name is a list of all the plants in that file. Between the two file names is a preview of the focused (first selected) plant on either side. You can only select plants in one plant file at a time. The buttons going down the middle of the plant mover operate on whichever plants are selected, on either side. Selecting plants, undoing and redoing, and working with the clipboard work the same way as in the main window.

To copy plants from one plant file to another using the plant mover,

▪ Choose Move > Plant Mover from the File menu on the main window.

▪ If you have made changes to the current plant file since you last saved it, PlantStudio will ask if you want to save your changes before you use the plant mover. (This is because the plant mover reads the file from disk, not from the stored file in memory.) Click Yes to save the open file before opening the plant mover. We recommend doing this, because otherwise the copies of the file on disk and in memory could get out of synch. Click No to open the plant mover without saving your changes to the open file. Clicking No will mean that the file loaded in the plant mover may not be exactly like what you see in the main window.

▪ The current file will be opened on the left side of the plant mover. If you didn't want to work with the current file in the plant mover, click Close. Then open any one or two plant files you want to work with. If you want to make a new file to copy plants to, click New.

▪ Select the plant(s) you want to copy in one of the lists. To select more than one plant, shift-click (to add contiguous items in the list) or Control-click (to add isolated items).

▪ Click Transfer. Copies of the plants you selected will appear in the other plant list.

▪ Click Quit.

▪ If you have made changes to either file, PlantStudio will ask if you want to save the changes. Click Yes to save the changes you made to the file, or click No to close the file without saving your changes, or click Cancel to go back to using the plant mover without saving the file (if so, the rest of this doesn't apply).

▪ If you made changes to the file currently open in PlantStudio and saved the file, PlantStudio will ask you if you want to reload the current file.

▪ Click Yes to reload the current file. If you didn't save your changes to the current file when you opened the plant mover, the information in the main window and the plant mover will be different (because the plant mover reads from the disk, not from memory). So if you return from the plant mover in this case and you reload the current file from disk, you will lose the changes you had made in memory before starting the plant mover. If all you did was drag a plant or change a rotation, this will not be a problem. If you are not sure what changes you made, we recommend saving the file before you start the plant mover.

▪ Click No to go on without reloading the current file.

Tips on using the plant mover

▪ You can select multiple plants in the plant mover, but you can only rename one plant at a time. If more than one plant is selected, only the focused (first selected) plant will be renamed.

▪ If you make a mistake while using the plant mover, you can go back to the original state of any file before you made changes to it. To abandon the changes you made to a file in the plant mover, click Close on the side of the plant mover with the problem file, and click No when asked if you want to save changes. Then click Open on the same side and open the file again.

▪ You can use the plant mover as an extra undo for deletion. To retrieve plants that were deleted in the current file since it was last saved, choose Plant Mover from the File menu in the main window. When PlantStudio asks you if you want to save changes to the current file before you use the plant mover, click No. In the plant mover, select the deleted plants and click Copy, then click Quit to close the plant mover. In the main window, choose Paste from the Edit menu or type Ctrl-V.