C-more Micro HMI Common Object Features from AutomationDirect

When you double click an object (or drag it onto the screen), you will be presented with a dialog. Most of the objects share a lot of common features. These common features are reviewed in this video so each individual video doesn’t have to repeat them. We’ll use this push button object for this video, but these features will apply to almost all of the other objects. In the upper left you can Name this object. The user never sees this – it’s just for your reference so you can easily identify it later. Below that we see a preview of the object and if it has any action, there will be a way to simulate that by clicking on a button. This is a push button so it has a controllable preview. Note that the button on the screen also updates when you click on the preview control. Every change you make in this dialog will be reflected in this simulated view, so this is a great way to experiment with things without having to leave the dialog! This preview pane even keeps up with any size changes you make. For example, les go change the size of this guy – lets assign a tag first - and change the size of something real wide then go back to the dialog – sure enough the preview pane tracks it one for one. I’m going to change that back real quick so we can do some other things with this… The label box allows you to add a label to the object on the screen. This always uses a portion of the object area so it usually becomes a tradeoff between having a static label, or leaving room for the action text that you have chosen for that object. If you choose to use the label, let’s put something shorter in here - you can specify the location – the top or the bottom -, the color – normal or black or inverse, and the alignment – notice that when you drop down the alignment and drag over these, it shows you a preview of what it is going to look like on both the simulated pane and the real object. And of course, you can choose a font. The font choices usually allow the built in fonts OR you can choose a windows font if you want to. If the object requires text as part of its operation – in this case we have OFF text and ON text - you will be able to type in whatever you want there along with the colors and the alignment – lets see – I’m in the ON position right now so these alignments will track as I move them around. I’m watching this guy over here. If I go to the OFF state, then these alignments will track. Most objects will require you to enter a TAG for the object to control or react to (see the video on TAGS for more about the TAG Database, creating tags, etc.). Some objects allow you to draw an optional frame around the some part of the object – in this pushbutton the frame is drawn around the action text. This also uses real-estate within the button object so be careful when you are using it that you leave yourself enough room for your text. Additionally, you can specify a theme type by selecting it from this drop down. The current theme looks like this, we can change it to a single line, this is the border around the outside of the object. You can choose different kinds of look and feel for your objects. But again, remember, the more complicated the theme type, the more room it takes in your object. So it all becomes a tradeoff between how much stuff you have in your object vs. how many features you add to it. Most of the time a simple line will work just fine. Some objects will allow you to pick a style; for this push button you can choose between round or circle. And again, the Frame style interacts with that. So now we have a round frame style as opposed to a rectangular one. If an object can take a user input, there will usually be an option to add a function keys so instead of touching an object on a touch screen you can also use a function key to activate that object. Note that while there are five function keys on the panel, there’s an option to use 10 function keys. Check out the video on setting up Function Keys 6-10 on how to use those function keys. Each object allows you to leave yourself a comment. We want to encourage you to do that. You will be surprised at how much you forget after you have been away from the project for a while. Leaving yourself a comment on the intended purpose of this object is a great way to jog your memory and make projects maintainable. Finally, each object has an invisibility option. If enabled, it allows the visibility of the object to be controlled by the PLC through a TAG. You specify a TAG this object should monitor and under what conditions the object should be visible. You get to choose all the usual things. So in this case, as long as this TAG is greater than a 1, the object will be visible. That’s all there is for this video – be sure to check out the other videos in this series. And as always, please send us any topics you would like to see covered – or - any other comments for that matter – we appreciate the feedback!