Overview
Factories are the self-contained workspaces where everything you build in ProDex lives — simulation models, entities, data pipelines, BOMs, plans, and results. Dexter is factory-scoped too: each factory has its own conversations, knowledge base, uploaded files, and custom workflows, so context built in one factory doesn’t leak into another. Everything in a factory saves continuously as you work — there is no manual save step. For the conceptual background, see Key Concepts.ProDex runs in all major desktop browsers. There is no mobile app or mobile browser support — plan on a desktop for both building and reviewing.
What’s Inside a Factory
Switching factories switches all of it at once — models, pipelines, plans, results, and Dexter’s context all follow the active factory.
The Factory Selector
Click the factory name at the top of the sidebar to open the factory selector:- Search factories: filter the list by name
- Current: the factory you’re in now
- All factories: every factory you own, listed alphabetically
- Star: mark factories as favorites to find them quickly
- Footer actions: New Factory, Factory files (import/export), Sharing, and Factory settings
Creating a Factory
From the factory selector, click New Factory, enter a name, optionally add a description, and create it. The new factory opens immediately with an empty workspace.Renaming and Describing a Factory
Open the factory selector and click Factory settings. The General section holds the factory’s Name and Description — edit either and click Save. You can also just ask Dexter: “Rename this factory to Building 7: Proposed Layout.”Version History
Because ProDex saves continuously (there’s no manual save), it keeps every version of a factory, not just the latest. Each edit you make, each Dexter turn, and each automatic checkpoint is preserved as a point-in-time version you can return to — you never have to remember to snapshot before making a change. To browse them, open Factory settings → Version history (under Data) and click Open. This opens the version tree: a timestamped list of every previous version of the whole factory. Select one to inspect it, then Roll back to restore the factory to that state. Rolling back first snapshots your current state, so the rollback itself is reversible if you change your mind. Version history travels with a shared factory: a recipient can move back through previous versions too, including versions authored by other members of the share.Deleting a Factory
Open Factory settings and use Delete factory at the bottom.Sharing a Factory With Teammates
Factories are scoped to the user who created them — teammates don’t see your factories by default. The Sharing menu in the factory selector has two actions: Share factory and Publish Update.Share Factory
Share factory opens a dialog listing the users in your organization. Select one or more recipients and click Send. Each recipient gets a notification and must accept the share; once accepted, they receive their own copy of the factory.Publish Update
Your factory is already saving a new version constantly as you work, so Publish Update isn’t what creates a version — it’s what notifies your collaborators that there’s a new one worth picking up. When you’ve made changes worth distributing, Publish Update sends the current version of your factory “to everyone with an accepted shared copy,” together with an update note that recipients see in their notifications. Each recipient then chooses whether to apply it: applying moves their copy to your published version (their current state is snapshotted first, so they can back out). Nothing reaches a shared copy until you publish, and nothing changes in it until the recipient applies — so a published update is the deliberate, owner-initiated way to move a shared factory forward.Share Notifications
The Notifications inbox at the bottom of the sidebar tracks the sharing lifecycle: shares waiting for you to accept, confirmations when a recipient accepts your share, and notes from published updates.If several people need to work toward one factory, the working pattern is: one owner shares copies, collaborators build on their copies, and an admin can later merge factories into a consolidated result.
Export and Import
The Factory files menu in the factory selector holds Export Factory and Import Factory. Export downloads the factory as a portable.prdx file; import creates a new factory from one. This is the path for backups, moving work between environments, and sharing across organizations — see Export & Import for the full details.
Factory Scope and Isolation
Day-to-day work in a factory is visible only to its owner (and to whoever they’ve shared a copy with). Admins additionally see every factory’s name and owner on the Admin Panel, where they can merge factories across owners.
Best Practices
- One factory per scenario or facility. Keep the current state in one factory and proposed changes in another; compare by switching rather than tangling both into one model.
- Export before destructive changes. Version history can restore you, but a
.prdxexport is a backup you hold in hand. - Publish updates deliberately. Batch your changes and attach a meaningful update note — recipients see that note in their inbox.
- Prune old factories. Favorites float the important ones; delete the rest to keep the selector short.