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
- Starred: factories you’ve marked as favorites, most recently changed first
- The rest, grouped by when each factory last changed: Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 Days, Previous 30 Days, and Older
- Star: click the star on any factory to add it to, or remove it from, Starred
- 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
The former Version history browser and restore controls have been retired. To keep a copy before changing a factory, export it. Importing that file creates a new factory; it does not roll the current factory back. Keep any required data files with the export, as described in the export guide. For a model you are about to change, ask Dexter to copy it first. Automatic snapshots used by sharing are not a replacement for a backup you can open and restore yourself.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 recipient field. Type each teammate’s email address and press Enter to add it, choose what to share, and click Send. Each recipient gets a notification and must accept the share; once accepted, they receive their own copy of the factory as it was when you sent it. A large factory can take a moment to copy — the recipient sees “Setting up this shared factory” until it opens. Recipients must be other members of your organization. Addresses outside it are skipped individually, so invitations to eligible recipients can still be sent. The dialog reports which recipients were skipped and why. Review Choose what to share before sending. Content categories start selected on the first share; later shares can reuse your last content selection. General uploads require a fresh explicit selection every time:
Entities, lookup tables, constants, BOMs, and configurations are sent in full with every share, whatever you pick above. Within Share factory, selecting a single model or app, or no models at all, still includes every product recipe in the factory. Review those contents before sending. You can Cancel an invite that hasn’t been accepted yet.
Check the share dialog for pipelines that need uploads you have left out. A pipeline’s own input folder travels with the pipeline, but files elsewhere must be selected separately. Apps may also need factory datasets beyond the datasets they own. If you include a pipeline without its datasets, the recipient can run it to rebuild them; a dataset shared without its pipeline arrives without that link. Import warnings appear in the recipient’s notifications.
Publish Update
Publish Update captures your factory as it stands now and notifies recipients of accepted shared copies that an update is available. 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 replaces their copy with your published state. Recipients should export their own work before applying an update they may want to undo. 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. Keep the
.prdxand any required data files so you can import a new copy if needed. - 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.