The File menu contains commands for opening and saving files, importing and exporting data, and printing.

Selecting New Marker Data will present a dialog box where you may input the four corners of the desired surface. These points are input as ‘Bow at deck edge’, ‘Bow at foot’, ‘Transom at deck edge’, and ‘Transom at keel’. You may also enter the number of points you intend using, including the edge points, in the definition of the bow and in the definition of the stern.

Prefit has the ability to save markers to disk and recall them at a later date. By selecting Open Marker Data, a dialog box appears with a list of marker files available. Select the Markers file you wish to recall, click the Open button and the requested marker file will be opened. In windows, the Prefit marker files are given the extension ‘.pfd’.

If you wish to format a table of markers using a spreadsheet or word processor, or if you have a file of points generated by another computer program, Prefit is capable of reading in a text file of marker points directly.

The requirements for a text file are:

The data is in columns of station number, station position, offset from centre and height.

Each line should terminate with a Carriage Return (CR) and each column should be separated with a TAB character.

The first marker for each station should be the centreline, and the final marker for each station should be the sheerline.

Select Close Marker Data when you wish to finish with the current set of markers. Before closing, a dialog box will appear asking whether you wish to save the current set of markers. If you select Yes the current set of marker will be saved to the disk.

Selecting Save Marker Data will save the current set of markers to disk.

Selecting Save Marker Data As enables you to save the current set of markers under a new name. This is useful if you modify a set of markers, but wish to keep a copy of the old version as well as the new.

This allows you to save the surface you have generated to disk as a Maxsurf design file. The file can then be opened by Maxsurf. All the markers entered in Prefit will also appear in Maxsurf.

The Page Setup dialog allows you to change page size and orientation for printing.

Choosing the Print function prints out the contents of the uppermost Prefit window.

Exit will close down Prefit and return you to the Desktop.  If Prefit has a set of markers or a surface open that has not been saved to disk, you will be asked whether you wish them to be saved.