C-more Micro HMI Setting Up Background Screen from AutomationDirect

Sometimes you will want to create several screens that all share common objects like these navigation icons right here. When I click on an icon, it takes me to the next screen, BUT I have the same set of icons across the bottom of the screen. When we setup the project, we could copy and paste those on each screen in the project, but that is really hard to maintain, especially when you have lots of screens. Fortunately, there is an easier way – we use something called a background screen - and that is exactly what you are seeing here: This background screen is being used by all of the other screens. So all we have to do is edit this one screen and every screen in the project will be updated. Lets see how to set that up. First, create all of your screens as you normally would, in this example we have setup several dummy screens – We have a screen 1 which is our Tools Screen, A Graph Screen, A Fan Screen, and a Stop Screen – these don’t do anything, they just give us place holders to jump to. In addition to the four screens, we have a 5th screen we have labeled BACKGROUND. It’s on this screen that we are going to place all of our objects that are going to be shared by all of the other screens. So for this example we have simply placed a graphic on top of a screen change push button. This screen change push button takes us to screen 1. We cover that with a pretty graphic and now we have a cute graphical screen change button. Same thing here – this is just a graphic sitting on top of a screen change which will take us to screen number 2. Once you have setup your common object screen, or your “Background” screen, then you just go to the other screens, and click on this check box. This allows this screen to use screen 4 as it’s background screen. You can select any screen you want as a background, in this case, of course, we want oto use our background screen. So we have done that for all of our screens here – screen 1 we have enabled the background and said use screen 4, screen 2, enable background and again use screen 4, screen 3 the same thing, and screen 4. Again, we enable the background and we pick the screen we want to use as a background. Now when I click on a screen, you can see what is native to the screen is in black and white, and what’s in the background shows up as a gray just to remind you those objects are not actually on the screen. Of course, The background objects are not dimmer than the objects on the actual screen, this is just to help you during editing. Also note that the color of the background screen color – green in this case - is NOT transferred to the new screen, only the objects are transferred. The beauty of this is now when you want to change one of the common objects; you only have to do it in one place. Let’s simulate that one more tie and see how it works. Now all the screens have the same look and feel, but when it comes time to edit the project, all we have to do is change the one screen with the background object and every screen in the project will be updated. That’s all there is to setting up background screens – 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!