Assign alias name to an object

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

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 Plant_Area area object has been assigned a more specific Building_A alias name.

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 runtime 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 About ViewApp navigation.

Also, alias names can be hidden from the navigation model of a running ViewApp or in preview mode by placing an underscore ( _ ) as the first character of the alias name. Hiding an alias name is useful for navigation items like a system node in the navigation model that does not provide any useful ViewApp information to an operator. For more information about configuring the visibility of an alias name, see Hide assets in ViewApp navigation during runtime.