Example of content reuse

Assume a plant that has three tanks making soda and requires:
  • One screen that provides an overview of the plant showing all three tanks.
  • Screens that show details for each individual tank.
Creating one tank detail screen, duplicating it three times, and changing all the tag bindings on the screen for each screen would require:
  • Additional time.
  • Extra memory for four screens.
  • Additional maintenance because adding or removing any element requires modifying all of the detail screens.
Using
View Designer
 requires only:
  • One overview screen that displays all of the tanks.
  • One tank detail screen reused to display information for each tank on request. Changes to the screen design requires changing only one screen.
The tank detail screen essentially acts as a template. Create user-defined properties to act as placeholders for the values or data to pass to the template screen. Pass values into the reusable screen through two different types of properties:
  • An alias property that references an existing property of the screen and its content.
  • A data type property that is tied to a specific data type of a controller tag, such as a DINT, REAL, or a
    Logix Designer
     user-defined data type. For example, create a
    Logix Designer
     user-defined data type called Tank that has members representing all the data for a tank. The data type properties are used in place of a specific
    Logix Designer
     tag instance when you configure bindings and expressions on the screen.
A user-defined property is a property of the screen. Screen properties appear on the
Property Definition
 tab.
To pass the correct tag context to use at runtime, use a Navigation event or a shortcut. For example, create three shortcuts to the tank detail screen. The first shortcut provides the values specific to tank 1, the second for tank 2, and the third for tank 3.
On each shortcut, bind the user-defined properties to the appropriate Logix tags to provide values to the reusable screen.
On the HMI device, the shortcuts appear as icons on the
Navigation menu
. Pressing the tank 1 screen icon opens the tank detail screen. The values for the tank 1 screen properties are passed to the screen.
In addition to passing tag values from the controller to a screen, pass the values of non-alias screen properties from one screen to non-alias screen properties of another screen with each target screen acting on the data associated with its source screen. In other words, chain reusable screens together by passing tag values to the first screen, which are then passed to subsequent screens.
IMPORTANT:
  • Chaining alias properties together is not recommended.
  • Binding the property of a graphic element in a Navigation event displays the property value of the graphic element from the target screen. It does not display the property value of the graphic element from the source screen. Passing properties of graphic elements between screens is not supported.
The same principle applies to reusing popups. To pass the correct tag context to use at runtime, create a Navigation event with a
Popup Open
 command.
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