Libraries

A project created with the Situational Awareness Starter Project will contain "SA_Library" as an included project. SA_Library provides a large set of objects that you can use to add content to your graphics pages and faceplates. These objects apply a consistent look and feel to a wide variety of common user interface controls.

The objects include Genies that represent physical pieces of equipment (such as drives, meters, and valves), and a set of common library elements that support them (such as status indicators, running state indicators, control mode indicators, and output bars).

For a complete list of the libraries included in the SA_Library project, see Situational Awareness Library Project in the System Projects Reference section of the help.

Composite Genies

What makes the Situational Awareness Library unique is that many of library objects can be built using a Composite Genies. A Composite Genie is an XML file that defines a set of Genies, options, parameters and layout display rules to determine what is displayed on a page. This is based on user-selected presentation options. The collection of components can be configured as a single entity, greatly reducing the size and complexity of your libraries.

To use a Composite Genie, simply open the XML template that best suits the piece of equipment you want to represent on a page. Ideally, the XML template should match the equipment type that was used to create the equipment instance the Composite Genie will represent. This is recommended, as the components of a Composite Genie are designed to bind to specific equipment items that cannot be changed.

This is straightforward if you have created your equipment instances using the default equipment types provided with the Situational Awareness Starter Project.

Example

The following drive (PMP02) is from the ExampleSA project. It was created using the "Drive.xml" Composite Genie, which means it binds to the following equipment items.

The equipment items "Running", "CtrlMode", and "OP" are all associated with variable tags that link to the I/O device.

These variables tags were generated by Equipment Editor, as PMP02 was based on the "Drive" Equipment Type, and these three items each had a variable tag element defined.

For example, the OP item had a variable tag element that specified the following Tag Name syntax:

{equipment.TAGPREFIX}_OP

In the case of the equipment instance for PMP02, the Tag Prefix was set to "TopMilk_PMP02_", resulting in the tag named "TopMilk_PMP02_OP".

If you generate your variable tags in this way using the equipment types provided in the Situational Awareness Starter Project, the item bindings required by each library object should fall into place when you use the corresponding Composite Genie. See Add Equipment Using Equipment Editor.

You can change the variable names defined in the equipment type if you want to maintain your own tag naming convention. However, you still need to pair your variables with the relevant equipment items.

Note: To determine the required bindings for a library object and its default faceplate, search for the object in the Situational Awareness System Projects section of the help. The description of each library objects lists the Equipment.Items it expects.

See Also

Insert a Composite Genie