# Introduction

## Starting with Graphical User Interface (GUI)

FIDES Lab is in English language by default, for other languages please see Language section. FIDES Lab uses JAVA, there are 2 *.bat launchers for the Windows version:

- fides-lab-provided-jre.bat: using this launcher, FIDES Lab will use the embedded JAVA Adoptium OpenJDK JRE that is inside FIDES. This choice is the good one when you don't have JAVA or your JAVA version is lower than Java 17.
- fides-lab-system-jre.bat: in this case FIDES Lab will use the JAVA installed on your PC. It is recommended if your IT prevent execution of not-white-listed executable.

## Starting with command line

The desktop application of FIDES Lab can be used without the graphical user interface. It is very useful when you want to do automated batch computation of several files. FIDES Lab can be started using a command line whose syntax is the following: on linux:

    ./fides-lab-command-line-runner.bat ./file1.fides [./file2.fides] .... [./file3.fides] resultDirectoryPath

on windows :

    .\fides-lab-command-line-runner.bat .\file1.fides [.\file2.fides] .... [.\file3.fides] resultDirectoryPath

> Warning: If several files are provided, put MissionProfiles files first, then CustomFamilies, and finally BomFidesItems to avoid conflicts !

## Graphical User Interface (GUI) presentation

Once software has started, you can see the following window:

This window is made of a top banner (navigation bar) containing button to navigate through FIDES Lab features, and, under the navigation bar, the main part that changes according to the feature you use.

### Menu

The menu button on the left give access to all basic features/actions of a software:

- New document
- Open document
- Recent files
- Save file
- Save file as
- Excel import
- Reporting

Some actions can be triggered thanks to a keyboard shortcut, you can check the shortcut at the right of each action if available.

### BOM

The BOM button enable BOM structure creation, please refer to BOM creation.

### Mission profile

The Mission profile button enable mission profile creation, please refer to Profile creation.

### Properties

The Properties button enables the document property editing.

It is a place where you can find information about your document: name, creation date, versions, etc… You can also specify the author name, and check the Save details results in OpenFides if you want to do so.

warning you can check the Use custom families checkbox but only is required by your client or for research purpose because it is out of FIDES guide scope.

Don't forget to use the save modifications using the save button in the upper-right corner () .

### Other buttons

Button | feature
--- | ---
EN | Displays the current language (see Language)
| Opens computation window (see Computations and results)
| Undo the last modification, warning: once a table is in edit mode everything that is done between the unlock and lock(orsave) is considered as one unique modification
| Redo the last undone modification
| Opens this help / user manual
| Opens the info panel

## Working step

Now that you know where the main features are located, you can start your reliability study. The recommended working steps are:

- Creating your product, see FIDES model.
- Saving your work (frequently), either the full model or its parts, see Open-FIDES files.
- Computation and result analysis, see Computations and results.
- Reporting, see Reporting