Reuse Add-On Graphics

Assume a plant has 50 tanks. Depicting the plant requires 50 tank graphic elements. This requires a tank graphic element, a text display, and a value display for each tank. Create an Add-On Graphic that contains all three graphic elements and then reuse that Add-On Graphic 50 times to avoid changing the tag bindings on each instance of the Add-On Graphic.
To reuse an Add-On Graphic and not change tag bindings for each instance, create user-defined properties. User-defined properties act as placeholders for the values to pass from the instances of the Add-On Graphic to the definition of the Add-On Graphic. These values appear on the HMI device.
There are several different methods to reuse Add-On Graphics:
  • User-defined data type property. A property in the definition of an Add-On Graphic tied to a specific data type in a controller. Bind a graphic element in the definition of the Add-On Graphic to a member of the data type. Then from Properties window in an instance of the Add-On Graphic, bind to an instance of the Logix data type. The binding passes the tag from the instance of the specified Logix data type to the instance of the Add-On Graphic. The Add-On Graphic displays the value on the HMI device.
  • Alias property. A user-defined property in the definition of an Add-On Graphic that appears in the Properties window of an instance of the Add-On Graphic. Alias a property within the definition of an Add-On Graphic so the property appears in an instance of the Add-On Graphic where the value can change.
    View Designer
     passes the value of the aliased property to the instance of the Add-On Graphic. The Add-On Graphic displays the value on the HMI device.
  • Property to property binding. Bind the properties of one graphic element in the definition of an Add-On Graphic to the properties of another graphic element in the definition. The graphic elements in the definition can show the same value in different formats. For example, bind the Value property of a Numeric Display graphic element to the FillLevel property of a tank graphic element, and bind the FillLevel property of the tank to the tag that represents the fill level of the tank. The fill level displays graphically and numerically on the HMI device.
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