As a child, I remember playing quite a lot in the sand by the coast in the summers. I don’t think I cared very much about sandboxes though, except maybe for growing stuff in. Anyway, that’s totally besides the point with regards to today’s topic, which is about N2D’s sandbox, used to test out a project in development.

The problem, you see, is the fact that N2D is a Designer, running on top of a neural network, accessing it’s services.  So when you are designing the network, it is also running.  This means that all the stuff you type into the text-channels, will also be stored in the project. Something you don’t want while performing tests.

To overcome this issue, N2D can use a special directory as a sandbox in which it can copy projects that need testing. The sandbox project will be started in it’s own designer so you can play with it, with all of it’s features (including neuron streaming) without messing up the actual data.

To run the current project in a sandbox, use the ‘Sandbox‘ toolbar button or menu item Debug/Sandbox. This will save the project, copy it over to a temp directory (selectable in the ‘Tools/Options‘ window) and start a new session.

When N2D is started in Sandbox mode, it will show this in the lower right corner, like so: