An Engineering Project groups one or more jobs, letting you define the sequence of jobs needed to make a part or multiple parts. Projects are the approval and release unit: releasing (and then approving) a project cascades a pre-release check, lock, and — on approval — a tool-assembly-release and inventory sync across every job it contains.
Fields
Section titled “Fields”| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | Descriptive name for the project (e.g., Housing Op 10–30). Required. Maximum 64 characters. |
| Description | Optional free-text description. Maximum 128 characters. |
| Status | See Status flow below. |
| Multiple jobs setup | When enabled, all jobs in the project must use the same machine. Enforces single-machine multi-setup planning. |
| Picture | Reference photograph for the project. PNG or JPEG only. |
| Locked | When true, prevents changes to the project’s jobs. Toggled independently via the Lock/Unlock command. |
For the fields and status flow of individual jobs within a project, see Jobs.
Status flow
Section titled “Status flow”Projects use the same 5-state lifecycle as jobs.
| Status | Description |
|---|---|
| Draft | Project is being designed. Jobs and operations can be added and changed freely. |
| Released | Pre-release check has passed and every job in the project is locked against further edits. Submitted for engineering-manager approval. Inventory sync has not happened yet. |
| Approved | Engineering manager has confirmed the project. This is when all tool assemblies across every job in the project flip to Released status and their products are synced as Inventory Items. |
| Active | Project is in production. |
| Archived | Project is no longer active. Read-only. |
Project-level status and lock changes cascade: saving the project’s status or lock overwrites the status/lock of every job it contains, regardless of each job’s own current state.
Commands
Section titled “Commands”| Command | Available when | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Release | Draft | Runs a pre-release check. On success, transitions to Released and locks every job in the project. Does not sync tool assembly products to Inventory. |
| Mark as Draft | Released | Reverses the project (and every job in it) back to Draft status. |
| Approve | Released | Transitions to Approved. Flips all tool assemblies across every job in the project to Released status and syncs their products as Inventory Items. |
| Mark as Draft | Approved | Reverses the project back to Draft status. |
| Mark as Released | Approved | Reverses the project back to Released status. Does not undo the tool assembly release or product sync already applied. |
| Archive | Active | Marks the project as no longer active. |
| Active | Archived | Reactivates an archived project. |
| Lock | Not locked | Locks the project (and cascades to its jobs) against edits, independent of status. |
| Unlock | Locked | Unlocks the project so it can be edited. |
| Setup Sheet | Any | Generates the setup sheet for the whole project, with a section for each of its jobs. Opens as a PDF. Not gated to any status. |
A project also has Process, Tool List, and NC Programs tabs with the same functionality as the equivalent job tabs, except that on the Process tab jobs can be added, edited, deleted, and reordered.