Project File Format

A LadderIDE project is a single .ldp file. It holds your whole program — the tag database, every routine and its rungs, motion axes, libraries and devices, the network configuration, and your trend setup — in one document you can copy, back up or email.

It is plain JSON

.ldp is text, not a binary blob. That is deliberate, and it is worth knowing even if you never open one: a text project file diffs in Git like source code, survives being moved between machines, and can be read by a human when something has gone wrong. Renaming the file does not break it — the name carries no meaning the project depends on.

Each file records the schema version it was written with. LadderIDE reads the current schema; a project saved by a much older pre-release build may not open, which is the one case where the format shows through.

Moving work between projects

Two things travel on their own, rather than only inside a project:

• Reusable blocks export as .mbs files. A block you wrote and tested in one project can be imported into the next, with its parameters and its body intact.
• Struct definitions export as .uds files, so a data type you designed once — a recipe record, a station's status word — can be shared the same way.

Libraries, devices and motion axes are configured per project and are not portable files; they are part of the .ldp.