Assign an alias name to an object

A running ViewApp can show objects as navigation items that appear by their assigned Galaxy names in the navigation model. Galaxy names may not be intuitive and easily recognizable to operators. Objects can be assigned more understandable alias names.

An alias name is just a string and not associated with any object attribute. An alias does not provide another way to address items in the navigation model of a ViewApp. Scripts and animations must still reference an object based on the assigned Galaxy tagnames.

Alias names are assigned from the Model view of the System Platform IDE. You can toggle the Model view to show the objects by their tagname or alias names. In the example below, the Site area object has been assigned a more descriptive Cambridge alias name and the Plant_Area object has the alias Building_A.

Alias names can be shown from the ViewApp and Layout editors but cannot be modified. Also, if an alias was assigned to an object and the ViewApp or Layout editors were open, the editors must be closed and reopened to show the new alias name.

An alias name appears in the navigation model of the ViewApp during run time or in preview mode.

Alias names are associated with navigation attributes that have the word Title in their names. For example, the CurrentTitle attribute returns the alias name of the current navigation item in a running ViewApp. You can write scripts using alias names to change the current focus of a ViewApp. For more information about navigation attributes that reference alias names, see More Information About Navigation Attributes in the AVEVA OMI help.