| There are two commands for controlling settings in Electric: Preferences... and Project Settings... (both in menu File. You can also get Preferences with this icon on the tool bar.

These two dialogs contain many panels for controlling different aspects of the system. The differences between these two dialogs is:

- Preferences 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 Settings 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 left side of the Preferences or Project Settings dialog is a tree-structured list of all of its different panels. The right side is the actual panel, which changes according to the panel requested. Below the list of panels is a "Help" button which takes you to the proper manual page which explains that panel.

### Where Preferences Are Stored

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.

You can export your preferences to disk for ease of saving and transporting. Use the "Export" button in the dialog, or with the Preferences... command (in menu File / Export). These will write an XML file with preference information. This XML file can be read back into Electric's preferences with the "Import" button, or with the Preferences... command (in menu File / Import).

### Where Project Settings Are Stored

Project settings are stored permanently on your computer in the same place as Preferences. However, they are also saved with your circuitry so that the values will be correct when the circuits are read back in.

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

When Electric finds Project Settings that are inconsistent with the current values, this dialog appears:

You must choose whether you want to use the new setting values (recommended) or the current setting. This can be done on an individual-setting basis, or for all settings that conflict.