When working in TradeStation's Development Environment (TDE), you may find yourself working on a strategy, function and paintbar all at the same time. For example, when creating the article, Capture The Big Moves, I created a strategy, a function and paintbar to demonstrate the weekly RSI signal. The painter paints the price candles red or green based upon the weekly RSI signal. The strategy takes the trades based upon the signal. Finally, there is a function which is used to normalize the units to buy.
In short, I have three different code windows open. What happens when I close my code windows and want to return to this project in the future? I have to hunt down these three files and reopen them. Wouldn't it be nice to have the ability to open all three of these code windows at the same time?
Well, you can do that by using Projects.
Using Projects will allow you to collect your related files (strategies, functions, painters, indicators) into a single file. Thus, when you want to work on this particular project, you just have to open the project and all the related files open.
Here is how you do it.
Create a New Projects by going under the File menu.
You can then give your project a name and save it on your hard drive. I store my projects within a directory under Documents. You can place it wherever you like.
You'll now find a small little Project window. In this case (below) you can see my Project window is called "Capture The Big Moves".
On this Project window you can right-click on the Project name and "Add Existing Items" to the Project. This is where I'm going to load my strategy, function and paintbar EasyLanguage code.
There! Now you can see in the image below that I've added my three related files.
Anytime I want to work on this project, I can simply open the Capture The Big Moves Project and all three of my files will open in the TDE window (see below).
All three files open when I open the related Project file.
If you have not been using Projects you may want to consider giving them a try. Just might save you a bit of time and hassle.
Jason, great helpful hint….
Outstanding!
Laurence
You’re welcome, Laurence. Glad you found it helpful.
Thanks Jeff, I’m starting to use Projects, but if I wanted to have a Strategy rely on two indicators, e.g. %R and ADX, would I still have to copy the code for each into a new strategy, or is there a way to just add the indicators and refer to them from the strategy?
Good question. I think you have to copy the code for each.