Clone designs, lock, and guest share

What this is for

A project holds several designs so you can compare options. Duplicate to try something without losing what you have. Lock the one you are quoting so the numbers cannot move. Share a view-only link with a client who has no account.

Steps

Duplicate and lock

1. In the designer, open the Design rail.
2. New design starts another option on this site. Duplicate copies the current one whole, including every hand edit.
3. Lock this design is what keeps a quote reproducible. Nothing on a locked design can change. Unlock to edit again. Incomplete wiring, or a family that requires an optimizer, refuses the lock - you can see the schedule; you cannot make the design a deliverable until it can be built.

Share

1. Share sits in the same place on every section of the project - Overview, Designer, Results, Financials and the rest - so handing a link out never means leaving the screen you are working on. The number beside it counts the people named and the live links that can already see this project. Share is drawn only for somebody in the project's own team who can edit it. Somebody the project was shared with does not see it, even with edit access, so a project only ever reaches the people its team chose.
2. By link is for a client. No account needed. It grants no editing and reaches nothing else you own. They see a read-only page of the design the link names - what it saves, the array, production and shading, where each exists - and the documents for that design that are ticked as the client's on the Documents screen.
3. Say who it is for (a note, not an address that will be emailed from the box), how long it lasts, which design it shows, and whose figures - the latest run, or a named run so the numbers stay as quoted.
4. Create link. The URL is shown once. Copy it now, or email it from that panel if this deployment can send mail. Only a hash is stored, so the product cannot show the live URL again. Revoke from the list when it should stop working.
5. The list shows how often each link has been opened and when last. A live link's row menu can switch it to Follow the latest run or Freeze on a named run after it has gone out.
6. By name grants a colleague access to this project alone - view or edit. Edit is access to the work: they cannot share it on, move its status, archive, duplicate or delete it, and the status mark shows them where the job is without a menu. They need an account already; an address with none is refused. To give somebody every project the team is quoting on, add them to the team instead.

A guest share is not a Viewer seat. A Viewer is on the roster. A link is one project, for somebody who is not a member. A wrong, revoked or expired link is the same screen: "This link does not open anything." It does not confirm the project still exists.

Duplicate on the Projects list is a different operation: it copies the whole site, and the copy starts as a draft. This rail duplicates a design.

Tips and common mistakes

• Duplicate is the cheap experiment. Lock is the quote. Do not lock the option you are still drawing.
• "Sent to" on the link is a label for you. Nothing is mailed from that box unless you use the send control that appears with the URL.
• An added file on Documents starts unticked for the client, because it may be a costing. A generated proposal starts ticked. Unticking holds it back from the link.

Related

• Roles, view-only, and invitations
• How a project works
• Guest share links
• Locking a design