Copy Attributes from One Element to Another

It is often convenient to create a new element as a copy of an existing element which has the same, or similar, attribute settings or members to those required. You do this in two stages:

1. Create a new element (as described in Create a New Element), which becomes the Current Element (CE).

2. Copy the attributes of another element (the 'source' element) so that they also become the attributes of the newly created Current Element (the 'target' element). The existing attribute settings, usually the defaults, are overwritten by the copied settings.

When an element is 'cloned' in this way, all attributes are copied from the source element to the target element except NAME (which must be unique) and LOCK (which is always unlocked in the target element). Additionally, and this is what makes the facility so powerful, all offspring of the source element are copied as offspring of the target element.

Note: If the Current Element already has members, it is not possible to make it a copy of another element in this way.

You may specify automatic renaming of the Current Element and its offspring as part of the copying process. Without this the new elements will be unnamed, since AVEVA E3D Design does not permit two elements in the same Database (DB) hierarchy to have identical names. You may also choose to copy only the members (and their offspring) of the source element, leaving the attributes of the Current Element itself unchanged.

3. To copy a complete element and all of its offspring, after creating a new Current Element of an appropriate type, enter

   COPY element_id

   where element_id identifies the source element to be copied.

   For example, to create a new item of Equipment which is an exact replica of a previously-defined Equipment, you might use the command sequence (at Zone level)

   NEW EQUI /EQUIPB

   COPY /EQUIPA

   This creates /EQUIPB as the Current Element and then turns it into an exact copy of /EQUIPA. All attributes and members of /EQUIPB now have the same settings as those of /EQUIPA, including its position, orientation etc., and so you will probably now want to move one of the Equipments to a different location.

4. To copy all offspring of an element, so that they create duplicate offspring for the Current Element, enter

   COPY MEMbers OF element_id

   The position, orientation, etc., of the Current Element now remain unchanged, but it acquires new members which are derived from the specified source element and which are correctly positioned relative to the Current Element.

5. To copy selected offspring of an element, so that they create duplicate offspring for the Current Element, enter

   COPY MEMbers integer TO integer OF element_id

   For example, the command sequence

   NEW BRAN /SIDEARM

   COPY MEMBERS 12 TO 20 OF /MAINLINE

   creates a new Branch named /SIDEARM whose components replicate that part of the existing Branch /MAINLINE between the specified list positions. The attributes of the Branch /SIDEARM itself are unaffected by the COPY command, so that its position, orientation, etc. (as defined by its Head and Tail settings) remain unchanged by the addition of its new members.

6. To copy attributes from an identified element into the current element, type

   COPY ATTributes OF element_id

   This causes all attributes (except for references to elements in DESI databases and OWNER) to be copied to the current element. Or:

   COPY LIKE element_id

   This is similar to the ATTRIBUTES option, except that as well as DESI references not being copied, neither are any position, direction, orientation or angle attributes.

   In both cases, the Specification Reference (SPREF) and Catalog Reference (CATREF) are also not copied between elements of different types.

7. To copy elements alongside their original positions, type

   COPY ADJ/ACENT select

   This option causes a list of elements, defined by the selection criterion select, to be copied alongside their original positions in the database. So if the list includes a SCTN and a PNOD (for example) then each of these items would be copied so that the new SCTN shares the same owner as the old SCTN and the new PNOD shares the same owner as the old PNOD. As this option copies elements, rather than just attributes, other COPY options, such as RENAME, are valid.

8. To copy all or part of an element and rename the copies, append the command

   ... REName old_name new_name

   to the corresponding COPY command line.

   For example, the command

   COPY  /FRACT1/PIPE  RENAME  /FRACT1  /FRACT2

   copies all attributes and offspring of /FRACT1/PIPE into the Current Element. Where /FRACT1 occurs as the name or part of the name, it is changed to /FRACT2 in the Current Element and its offspring. Thus the Current Element itself is now named /FRACT2/PIPE, and so on.

Related Pseudo Attributes