Merge Multiple .bsdesign Files

Hi all, I've just purchased and started using Bootstrap Studio for the first time. So, apologies if I ask about something that is obvious:

I have 3 .bsdesign files created by 3 people. Each file was made for one html page. How do I merge the 3 .bsdesign files and open them together as one .bsdesign? I need the following:

  1. My website will have 3 pages, each page from each .bsdesign file.

  2. I want to be able to copy components from one page to another, in order to make them all look coherent.

Thank you for your help!

ok I'll bite on this, but don't shoot me if it don't work lol. This "can" be done, but I would highly suggest that you make a backup of each of the design files before you do this in case something messes up. Here's what I do as I know it works.

If you want to do "JUST" the components from the pages you can do this by doing the following:

  1. Open 1 of the other 2 people's projects, finding the component you want to copy out and select the entire component (with or without the container div, depending on your needs, since you cannot drag a container div into a container div.
  2. Once selected you can right click over the highlighted item in the Overview Pane, or you can choose Component from the top menu, (I'm on a Mac so I don't know how Windows users see it sorry).
  3. Then choose Add to Library. It will automatically check all CSS, JS and Images that are part of that component, be sure to leave them in case they are different than your projects classes/id's/images/js etc.
  4. Now you can close that project and open the one you want to copy it to. Your Component should now be in the list at the top left in the Studio section of the app. Drag it where you want it and edit the component as needed to remove duplicate classes/id's/images/js parts or files.

NOTE: For copying full pages be sure to mimic the same folder structure that the other 2 people used when importing any files so that they will still work with their pages.

1. First thing I would do is export all 3 of them to separate folders. Each of this is going to have their own CSS, JS and Images files within them. You will want to check these to see if anything is different. JS should be pretty easy and I'm going to assume it won't be any difference or very small. If there are any differences, you will want to import those extra files, OR you will want to copy the different areas to the other JS file of the project that will be your end project. NOTE: You can import them and check them by clicking on each component of a page if the files aren't too large. This way you can see any duplicates and either delete them if they are exact duplicates or rename them (in the class and the elements of course) if they have differences from yours.

2. Do the same for the CSS, find any added classes that you don't have in your current design and add them. If the files aren't too huge to start with it shouldn't take long to do this.

3. Now check the images for any extra images that you don't have in your end project and import them as well, that the other 2 people used in their projects.

4. Now you should have all the supporting files imported/edited as needed and you can now copy the pages themselves. You can do this easily by right clicking over the page in the Pages list of the Design pane. There is a choice to Copy To.. choose that and it will give you options to copy it to any other projects you have open. Copy it to the end design project you want it in and you should be all set.

No guarantees of course since I can't be sure you catch all the supporting files and their setups, but if you follow this it should work pretty slick. It's a lot of hassle to go through though to have so many fingers working n the same projects, but it's doable.

One thing I would suggest is that you have your group keep track of some of the changes so that it's easier to do this process. It's a lot of work to scan files for differences unless you have something like Delta Walker 2 to help you with it and as the projects get further into completion it's only going to take longer. Since this doesn't work like Dreamweaver or the handful of other builders that allow you to use Checkout systems, it will get a bit daunting to do combining. Especially if you haven't set up specific rules for class/ID making, structure etc. If you have then you should be ok, but if not it could get messy. Just my opinion on that, might want to consider having each of you work on separate projects rather than separate pages is what I'm saying basically.

Hope that helps and happy combining lol