| All preferences in Electric are controlled with the Preferences... command (in menu File). You can also get Preferences with this icon on the tool bar.

This dialog has a central panel with a tree-structured list of all of the preferences, and two panels on the left and right for setting the Project and User aspects of the preferences. If a particular preference has no User or Project part, that panel does not appear. The differences between User and Project preferences is:

- User Preferences (on the right) affect the user's interaction with the system. Examples are printer control, display colors, and keyboard bindings. Each user may have different preferences, and it does not impact the design being done.
- Project Preferences (on the left) affect the actual circuitry being edited (and so should be the same for every user who is editing that circuitry). Examples are GDS layer mappings and technology scaling.

The Preferences dialog is modeless, meaning that it can remain on the screen while other work is done. For this reason, the dialog has an "Apply" button so that changes can be made without dismissing the dialog. The Preferences dialog also has "Export" and "Import" buttons for saving Preferences to an XML file (this function is also available from the File / Import and File / Export menus). Use the "Help" button to see the page in the user's manual that explains the current panel. Finally, the Preferences dialog has a "Reset" button for resetting the current User Preferences panel to its factory-default state, and a "Reset All" button for resetting all User Preferences to their factory-default state. Note that Project Preferences are not affected by the reset buttons.

#### Where Preferences Are Stored

All Preferences are stored permanently on your computer and are remembered each time you run Electric. The actual location of this information varies with each operating system.

- Windows: In the registry. Look in: HKEY_CURRENT_USER / Software / JavaSoft / Prefs / com / sun / electric.
- UNIX/Linux: In your home directory. Look in: ~/.java/.userPrefs/com/sun/electric
- Macintosh: In your home directory, under Library/Preferences. Look at: ~/Library/Preferences/com.sun.electric.plist

You can delete the appropriate data to reset Electric to its "factory" state.

To save your preferences to disk, for saving and transporting to other systems, use the "Export" button in the Preferences dialog, or use the Preferences... commands (in menu File / Export). This will write an XML file with preference information which can be read back into Electric with the "Import" button, or the Preferences... commands (in menu File / Import).

Project Preferences are also saved with your circuitry so that the values will be correct when the circuits are read back in.

By default, project preferences are saved in each library that is written to disk. However, for multiple-library projects, this can be troublesome if some libraries have different preferences than others. The solution is to create a file, in the same directory as the libraries, called "projsettings.xml". If this file exists, then preferences are taken from it (and ignored in the libraries). To write this file, use the Project Preferences... command (in menu File / Export). To override current settings and explicitly read a project preferences file, use the Project Preferences... command (in menu File / Import).

When Electric finds Project Preferences that are inconsistent with the current values, this dialog appears. You must choose whether you want to use the new setting values or the current setting. This can be done on an individual basis, or for all settings that conflict.