New Project

After you choose new project, the New Project dialog box will appear. In this dialog box, a number of options will be available based on the packages that are currently installed with the IDE, as shown in the following screenshot:

In the preceding screenshot, the left-hand side groups are the types of templates that you can choose from. Here, I have chosen Windows Desktop and, from the middle window, I have selected Console App (.NET framework) to create my application. The bottom of the screen allows you to name the project and choose the location to store the project files. There are two checkboxes available, one of which says Create directory for solution when selected (by default, this remains selected). This creates a directory below the chosen path and places the files inside it, otherwise it will create files just inside the folder.

Use Search Installed Template to search for any template by its name at the right corner of the dialog box if you do not find your template. Since more than one framework can exist in one PC, the New Project dialog will allow you to choose a framework; you need to use this while deploying the application. It shows .NET framework 4.6.1 by default as the framework for the project, but you can change to any framework by selecting one from the drop-down menu.

Finally, click OK to create the project with the default files:

The preceding screenshot shows what a basic IDE looks like after the project is created. We can also see each section of IDE. The main IDE is composed of many tool windows. You can see some tool windows on all sides of the screen. The Task List window is at the bottom of the screen. The main IDE workspace is in the middle and forms the working area of the IDE. The workspace can be zoomed into by using the Zoom control in the corner of the screen. The IDE search box at the top of the screen gives you insight into finding options inside the IDE more elegantly and easily. We will now divide the whole IDE into those parts and explore the IDE.