Select Tools > FME Options and click the Workbench icon.
General Defaults
- Automatically save workspace before running: Automatically saves your .fmw file after a translation, using a default name based on your source and destination formats.
- Open up attributes when linking transformers: When a transformer is connected to a writer feature type, both the transformer and the feature type expand to display their attributes, including those acquired by the connection.
- Draw bookmarks with a filled background: Bookmarks are shaded instead of transparent.
- Allow reader feature type editing: This feature, which is unchecked by default, allows you to edit the definition of a source file.
- Warning: This setting is for advanced users only. The source schema acts as a filter on the source data. Changing it can affect how a reader operates. To prevent accidental edits, we recommend leaving this setting cleared, and checking it only when making edits.
- Enable Quick Connect: To connect elements of a workspace, you can enable this feature to click an output port, release the mouse button, and then click an input port. This provides an easy alternative to the "drag and connect" method.
- Display feature counts: Enable or disable the feature count display.
- Canvas selection must contain objects: This setting controls the click-and-drag behavior of the Action Arrow
on the toolbar to select objects on the canvas. When unchecked, all objects and connectors that intersect with the bounding box created by the click-and-drag action are selected. When checked (default), only objects and connectors that are fully contained within the bounding box are selected. - Number of recent workspaces: This feature saves the name and location of a selected number of recently opened workspaces to the bottom of the File menu. The default number of filenames to display is 4 but you can select up to 15. Note that if you change this option, you will have to restart Workbench before it will take effect.
- Bring Start tab to front: Choose how often the Start tab should appear in the front when starting Workbench.
Warning Dialogs
- Reset Warning Dialogs: Redisplays all warnings that were dismissed with Do not remind me again.
Annotation Defaults
- Automatically generate header annotations: New workspaces will appear with the default Source Types, Data Flow, and Destination Types annotations that appear at the top of the workspace.
- Use transparent annotations: Gives annotations a transparent background.
- Automatically create summary annotation: Summary annotations display detailed information on feature types or transformers.
Save Options
- Save recovery data: Specify whether (and how often) you want Workbench to write a recovery file for your workspace.
- Autosave workspace before running: Automatically saves the current state of a workspace before it is run.
- Default save directory: Specifies which directory the Save As dialog shows for new workspaces. By default, it is set to Last workspace directory, which is the last workspace opened or saved by Workbench. It can also be set to Last data directory, in which case the Save As dialog shows the last data directory selected in a file picker. This is useful if the user wants their workspaces to follow their data.
This setting does not apply to workspace templates, which, when opened in Workbench, are not considered new workspaces. Similarly, existing workspaces do not honor this setting; they always use Last workspace directory in the Open, and Save As (Template) dialogs.
If the last directory has not been stored (for example, when FME is first installed), the default save directory is FME\Templates. If the last directory remembered does not exist, Workbench first attempts to show the parent folder of the last directory, and if that does not exist, Workbench defaults to FME\Workspaces.