BSA – HMI Form Properties

The easiest way to discuss properties is by discussing actual components, so I start with HMI Form. The terminology “Form” is well known for C# developers. I could have used dialog, window or whatever, but decided that “Form” is a good word. What you see below is the current HMI Form draft used in BSA. I will make this a bit more WYSIWYG later, but this is NOT the actual Form – this is the design of a Form. The actual Form will be generated from BSA. In this case I illustrate a Form that is a Display dialog containing a property list that design look and behavior. The result will be a long list of properties, but my experience with this from C# and other tools is that I 99% of the time only use a few selected properties – so lets start with those:

Colors and Style is something I set and later reuse. So the best idea is I think to remember what was last use and use that as a starting template. Simply said this is something I change once and seldom use so it can go into background on a separate page.

  • Description is very nice to always have in front.
  • Name of component
  • Caption Enable and Title
  • System Box enable
  • Minimize, Normal and Maximize box.
  • Starting Window state
  • Window Size and Scale limitations.
  • Window style – modal etc

The idea is to put the properties you actually use a lot and will change on a default front-page, while all the colors and nitty gritty details can go on specialized pages. The rationale for this is that I often spend time looking for things, so I want to see if I can make this a bit easier. The components will need a lot of properties so it makes sence focusing like this.

To do this one I will need the following completed:

  • My mini dopcument editor.
  • Standard single line text editor for name, title.
  • Boolean to enable caption, boxes and features.
  • Number editor
  • Combo box.
  • Color editor.

Form is a container for other components so it has no direct data-links.

Categories: HMI

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