7.8. Saving and Loading State

In this section we describe how to save the entire Quad View module layout to a file and restore it later.

The Quad View module can serialize its complete state — every loaded data source, every open tab, and each tab’s full set of control settings — into a single .d3dstate file that can be reopened to bring the module back exactly where it left off.

What Is Saved

A Quad View .d3dstate file captures:

  • Geometry Browser contents: the full list of loaded data sources (pipeline runs and .dream3d files) along with their geometry children, in tree order.

  • Tab list: every Quad View tab is written out, plus the currently-active tab index.

  • Per-tab control state:

    • Loaded geometry path

    • Oblique reslice and thick-slab toggles, plus the thick-slab blend mode (Mean / Min Intensity / Max Intensity)

    • Plane outline visibility, color legend visibility, stats annotation visibility, and the length-units text

    • Active array name and active component (or magnitude)

    • Per-array color preset, opacity transfer function control points, and custom data range

    • Volume rendering blend mode

    • Volume lighting parameters — shading on/off, ambient, diffuse, specular, specular power, light-follows-camera, SSAO, GI reach, volumetric scattering

    • Reslice cursor center and orientation (so oblique-rotated planes restore to the same angles)

The file is plain JSON, so it can be inspected or hand-edited if needed. A malformed file is reported to the application output console rather than crashing the application.

What Is Not Saved

The state file does not contain the underlying voxel data — only references to the data sources that produced it. When a state file is loaded:

  • .dream3d data sources are re-read from the paths stored in the file. If a referenced file no longer exists or has moved, that data source will fail to load and a warning is printed to the application output console; the rest of the layout is restored anyway.

  • Pipeline-derived data sources cannot be restored automatically — the originating pipeline must be re-run to repopulate them. The geometry browser entries are still listed but their geometries will not be available until the pipeline produces them again.

The current camera position / zoom in each window is also not persisted; each restored pane resets its cameras to a centered framing of the data.

Saving the Current State

  1. Make sure the Quad View module is the active dock by clicking on it.

  2. From the application File menu, choose Save State….

  3. In the file dialog, pick a destination folder, type a file name, and click Save. The .d3dstate extension is appended automatically if it is not typed.

    The dialog uses your platform’s native file chooser. On Windows and Linux the type filter shows DREAM3D-NX State Files (*.d3dstate); on macOS the native dialog hides the filter UI and saves the file with the .d3dstate extension automatically.

The file is written atomically using a QSaveFile so a partially written file is never produced even if the application is interrupted during the write.

Loading a Saved State

Loading is supported in two ways.

Via the File menu

  1. From the application File menu, choose Load State….

  2. In the file dialog, navigate to the .d3dstate file you want to open and click Open. The dialog uses your platform’s native file chooser; the same filtering caveat noted under Saving the Current State applies.

Via Drag and Drop

Drag a .d3dstate file from your system file browser and drop it anywhere onto the Quad View module area. The drop is recognized automatically and the file is loaded just as if it had been opened from the File menu.

In both cases the existing layout is replaced by the layout described in the file. Any unsaved control changes in the current layout are lost, so save first if those changes are worth keeping.

Note

Loading a state file that does not match the Quad View JSON shape (for example, a state file written by a different DREAM3D-NX module) is reported as a parse error in the application output console and leaves the current Quad View layout untouched.