# Cognex Designer Integrated Development Environment

This section describes the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) of Cognex Designer. This is used to develop your machine vision application prior to deployment.

## Graphical Features of the IDE

The Cognex Designer IDE supports the following graphical features;

- Rich Text, making pin names more readable
- Multi-line Text that can be used when adding labels
- Arrowheads available with lines
- Enhanced Zoom-in and Zoom-out capability

## Cognex Designer IDE Areas

The Cognex Designer IDE is structured into four main areas.

Tip: Cognex Designer supports customizing the development environment through dock-able windows, so the environment can be re-arranged to the user's preferences.

1. The Project Explorer, which is used to add, configure and organize everything within your project.

   - System
   - Pages
   - Scripting
   - Databases
   - Tasks
   - Components
   - Devices

2. The Project Editors, which are used to construct your project:

   - Task Editor
   - Page Editor
   - Expression Builder
   - Tag Manager
   - Script Editor
   - Recipe Editor
   - Alarm Editor
   - Precision IO Configuration Editor

3. The Project Windows area, which are used to navigate your project:

   - Search
   - Tag Browser
   - Template Browser
   - Toolbox

4. The Project Diagnostics area is used to monitor your project:

   - Errors
   - Output
   - Project Verification
   - Watch
   - Communications Monitor

Note: For more information related to how to use Cognex Designer, please see the Developing a Cognex Designer Project topics.