Introduction

Windows, Components, and Templates

Windows, components, and templates are the fundamental building blocks for projects using the Ignition Vision module. A Vision project is a collection of Windows. These windows get loaded into the Vision Client, where any number of them may be open at once. A window itself is a hierarchy of components. Components range in complexity from the humble Button and Label, all the way to the powerful Easy Chart and Table components. Shapes such as a line or a rectangle are also considered components, but have some additional capabilities such as the ability to be rotated.

Templates are components that can be re-used across many windows. They are designed separately, outside of any window. After being designed, they can be added to any of the windows within a project. The true power of a template is that if you change its design, all uses of that template across all windows will reflect those changes. This gives templates a major advantage over a copy-and-paste style of design.

Windows, components, and templates are designed visually with a drag-and-drop interface in the Ignition Designer. Components each have a host of properties that govern how the component looks and behaves. Components are brought to life through the combination of property binding and event handlers. These concepts should be generally familiar to anyone who has used a programming or RAD tool like Visual Basic or MS Access. Property binding is the technique of binding a component's property to something else that is changing, such as a tag or the results of a database query. Event handlers are a way to use scripting to react to events that the component fires, such as mouse or keyboard events.

The Window Workspace

When a window on template is selected in the Ignition Designer, the window workspace will become visible. Inside this workspace are all of the windows  and templates that are currently open. Each open window gets its own editing workspace, and you switch between windows with the tabs on the bottom. It is also standard to have a component palette panel and the property editor panel open.

Whenever you hit Save in the Designer, all open windows are committed and the whole project is saved. Note that even when working in other workspaces, for example the Transaction Group Workspace, any open windows will be committed and saved when you hit Save.

Whenever a project resource that is applicable in the Client scope (such as a Window or the Client Scripting configuration) is changed, all running clients get an update notification, or start running the new version of the project if the project is in Push update mode. To alter this behavior, you can put your project in manual publish mode. See Project Versioning for more information.

Preview Mode

The window workspace operates in two distinct modes: design mode and preview mode. You may switch between these modes with the play/stop buttons in the toolbar or the Project > Preview Mode menu item. You may also use the F5 key to toggle between the two modes.

In design mode, your mouse is used to manipulate components in a window. You can select, drag, and resize them. You may alter data bindings and event script configuration. Data bindings are active in design mode, but event handlers are not.

In preview mode, you are interacting with a "live" version of the window. Property bindings and event handlers will run, just like in the Client.

Preview mode is useful for a quick check of the operation of a window, but it becomes cumbersome when trying to test a whole project. For that, we recommend having a launched Client up as well, and doing testing in the true Client. You can quickly launch a client in one of the three launch modes via the Tools > Launch Project menu.