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The Designer Launcher makes it extremely easy for you to hit the ground running on your projects. The Designer Launcher locates all Gateways that are available on a local network. Each Designer that is added to the My Designers list represents a shortcut to a particular Gateway, and once that Designer is opened you can access or create new projects on that Gateway. The same Designer can access all the projects that are available on that Gateway, and you don't need to add the Designer multiple times for different Gateways!
Create a Designer Launcher shortcut on your desktop and you can open your Designer, and create or edit a project in a flash!
Login credientials/permissions
If the Designer Launcher locates and adds a Gateway to your list of designers, you must have the right credentials/privileges to login to that particular Designer.
Best Practice
It's good practice to download and install the Designer Launcher every time you install a new release of Ignition. The Designer Launcher is a separate application and is not part of an Ignition release, so it's important not to have an outdated Designer Launcher shortcut residing on your desktop. Each time you install a new version of Ignition, download and install the Designer Launcher, and let the install process create a new desktop shortcut for you automatically.
The Designer Launcher for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS are available on the Home tab of the Gateway Webpage. Ignition knows what platform you're running, and will display it on the Download button. There is section on how to download and install the Designer Launcher for each operating system. Simply click on the link in each section to expand the panel to guide you through the steps.
The Designer Launcher for Windows can now be installed as an "all user" application on a Windows operating system providing launcher access to all users on the same machine from a single installation. The first time you install the Designer Launcher, you will be prompted to select your install mode: "Install for me only" or to "Install for all users." If the Designer Launcher was already installed, subsequent install attempts are treated as an upgrade and you will not be prompted to select the install mode. This new option will only appear on new launcher installations, or after uninstalling a prior version of the installer.
Designer Launcher Destination Folder
When installing for "all users," the installer will be placed in the following folder: "%Ignition Installation Directory%\Program Files\Inductive Automation."
When installing for "me only," the installer will be found under the "\AppData\Roaming\Inductive Automation" folder.
Use the following steps to download and install the Designer Launcher application for the Windows platform.
You can access the Designer Launcher on the Home tab of the Gateway Webpage. Click Download to start the download process for the Designer Launcher.
Your web browser will detect the operating system, and suggest the appropriate download for the Download button.
Run the downloaded file (DesignerLauncherSetup.exe) found on the lower-left of the window, or go to your Downloads folder and double-click the file to run it.
If this is the first time installing the Designer Launcher, you will be prompted to select an install mode. Select either "Install for me only," or "Install for all users".
The Install Wizard will select a default destination location folder for the Designer Launcher application files. If you are "installing for me only", the destination folder will be different from the "all users" destination folder. 
The Select Additional Tasks window will open. You'll notice that a desktop shortcut is checked and will be created so you don't have to run the Designer Launcher each time you want to open the Designer. Click Next.
Now, you're Ready to Install the Designer Launcher on your computer. Click Install to continue.
Once the Designer Launcher is installed, click Finish.
The Ignition Designer Launcher window will open. Here you can select any Designers you have permission to launch. If you are running this for the first time, you will need to add your Designer(s). Adding Designers is addressed in the Adding Additional Designers section below.
The Designer starts up and the login window is displayed. Enter your credentials for the Designer, and click Login. Logging into the designer requires a user account in a User Sources, the user source must be set as the System User Source under Gateway Settings, and the user account must have the at least one of the designer roles (again, under Gateway Settings).
The Open/Create Project window is displayed giving you two options: create a new project or open an existing one. Enter a project name and then click the New Project button. 
Use the following steps to download and install the Designer Launcher application for the Mac OS platform.
From the Home tab on the Gateway Webpage, click the Download button for the Ignition Designer Launcher. 
To install the Designer Launcher application, drag the Designer Launcher icon to the Applications folder.
The Ignition Designer Launcher window will open. Here you can select any Designers you have permission to launch. If you are running this for the first time, you will need to add your Designer(s). Adding Designers is addressed in the Adding Additional Designers section. 
The Designer starts up and the login window is displayed. Enter your credentials for the Designer, and click Login. Logging into the designer requires a user account in a User Sources, the user source must be set as the System User Source under Gateway Settings, and the user account must have the at least one of the designer roles (again, under Gateway Settings).
The Open/Create Project window is displayed giving you two options: create a new project or open an existing one. Enter a project name and then click the New Project button. 
Use the following steps to download and install the Designer Launcher application for the Linux platform.
From the Home tab on the Gateway Webpage, click the Download button for the Ignition Designer Launcher. 
The Designer starts up and the login window is displayed. Enter your credentials for the Designer, and click Login. Logging into the designer requires a user account in a User Sources, the user source must be set as the System User Source under Gateway Settings, and the user account must have the at least one of the designer roles (again, under Gateway Settings).
The Open/Create Project window is displayed giving you two options: create a new project or open an existing one. Enter a project name and then click the New Project button.
Configuring the Designer Launcher is fairly simple no matter what platform you're working in. The process steps for configuring the launcher is the same for all three platforms: Windows, Mac OS, or Linux.
The steps and screenshots in this section were taken from a Windows platform. These steps are the same for Mac OS and Linux, but the screenshots for Mac OS and Linux may have a slightly different appearance. This section is used to configure the Designer Launcher for all three platforms: Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
The Designer Launcher finds the Gateways, you add the Gateways to My Designers, and the only thing left to do is create your Designer shortcuts. You can create a shortcut for each Designer, or use the Designer Launcher to display all your Designers. Creating shortcuts makes them readily accessible for opening a Designer quickly. If you are running this for the first time, you'll need to add your Designer(s). Adding Designers is addressed in the Adding Additional Designers section below.
Let's open the Designer Launcher to create a few shortcuts.
If you followed the Designer Launcher Download and Install steps for your platform, then you probably already have the Designer Launcher shortcut created which looks like the image below.
If you don't, then go back to the Gateway Webpage to download and install the Designer Launcher again, following the steps documented for your platform.
Find the Designer Launcher shortcut and click it to open the Designer Launcher window. A list of Designers will be displayed.
Go to your desktop and click the shortcut to open your Designer. You'll notice that name of your Designer is also the name of the shortcut (i.e., Controller). 
The Designer Launcher will now notify users if it detects that an updated version of the launcher is available from either the app or a shortcut. Depending on the change, the launcher may allow you to upgrade at a later time, or require a new designer launcher before launching the application.
You have the option of customizing your Designer Launcher Settings.
When the Designer Launcher Settings window opens, you can choose to use the default settings or customize each Designer. When finished, click Save Changes.
| Launcher Settings - Configurations for the Launcher | ||
|---|---|---|
| Property Setting | Description | JSON Name |
| Default Application | When set, the Launcher will attempt to automatically launch the specified Application when running. If left blank/null, an Application will not automatically start | default.application |
| Logging Level | Level of logging that will be used for the launcher: INFO, TRACE, DEBUG, WARN, and ERROR. | logger.level |
| Multicast Address | The address that will be used to listen for multicast broadcasts from Gateways. | multicast.address |
| Multicast Port | The port that will be used to listen for multicast broadcasts from Gateways. | multicast.receive.port |
| Auto Exit on Launch | Automatically close the launcher window when a client is started. | autoexit |
| Application Defaults - Default Configurations for New Applications | ||
| Property Setting | Description | JSON Name |
| Timeout | Maximum number of seconds allowed for any Gateway communication. Any communication that exceeds this amount will cause the client launcher to abort the communication and try again if configured. | timeout |
| Retries | The number of times a Client will to attempt to contact a gateway again if an error occurred during communication. Available values are:
| retries |
| Initial Heap | Amount of memory to be allocated at startup. | init.heap |
| Max Heap | Maximum amount of memory allocation for heap size. | max.heap |
| JVM Arguments | Arguments to append to client startup. These should start with a '-D' and be separated by semi-colons. | jvm.arguments |
If you're adding a Designer for the first time or adding additional Designers, this process is the same since the Designer Launcher does all the work for you.
| Setting Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Application Name | The name of the Designer application, as it appears in the launcher. |
| Timeout | The maximum number of seconds to allow for any gateway communication. Any communication that exceeds this amount will cause the Vision client launcher to abort the communication and try again if configured. |
| Retries | How many times to attempt to contact a gateway again if an error occurred during communication. Available values are:
|
| Initial Heap | The initial heap size (memory) for the client. |
| Maximum Heap | The maximum heap size (memory) for the client. |
| JVM Arguments | Additional JVM arguments to add to that specific application if desired. The defaults are created from the global jvm-args that exist at the time of the creation of the application. These can then be modified and the modifications will persist and never be updated again from the global setting. |
While attempting to launch an application, the launcher will check against the application's host gateway, and attempt to automatically download any required certificates. In addition, certificates can be manually added using the example below.
icon.
icon next to Details. If everything looks OK, click Trust Certificate.
icon.
icon.
icon.When using a self-signed SSL certificate, the certificates for the gateway must be locally accessible to the client launcher in the following directory:
|
When a certificate is placed in the directory above, the launcher will attempt to automatically add the certificate(s) to the local keystore upon application launch.
If the Designer Launcher fails to launch a designer for some reason, the log file can be found at:
{user folder}\.ignition\clientlauncher-data\designer.log
This log should contain any errors that occurred.
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