I’ve had a quick play around but without luck so I’m wondering if someone can help me with the following problem.
Put simply, I want to display a Cylindrical Tank component but have it horizontal (the tank is physically lying on the ground rather than standing upright).
If I just draw a tank and change the rotation to 90deg then the liquid fills from left to right, whereas I’d want it to represent true gravity, i.e. fill from bottom to top. (Also the text labels are rotated).
What are my options?
Do I need to draw a shape and then use the Level Indicator component somehow?
If I did want to do this, is there a rounded rectangle component available?
Separate, but related I note that you cannot combine a Level Indicator with a Shape and use the Union/Difference/Intersection buttons etc. So say for example I wanted to draw a circle but then effectively give it a fill level. If I draw a circle and a Level Indicator, how would I combine them so just my circle is “filled”?
You can use a SHAPE DIFFERENCE to fill a circle from the bottom up (although my solution was a square with a hole in the middle). These videos may help also:
Use the shape tools on the right of the window in designer (if you cain’t see those tools you may have to reset your designer panels).
Create a rectangle/square and then create a circle on top of it. (You can right-click on the object and set its SIZE and POSITION if need be.)
Select the RECTANGLE FIRST, then hold CTRL and select the circle to select them both. (You can use the Project Browser to multi-select these objects also.)
Use the SHAPE → DIFFERENCE from the menu bar at the top.
Now put a level indicator behind it, using the Z-Order toolbar items if you have to.
Adam - thanks very much for the walkthrough with examples.
The only issue with the circle is that I don’t want the white rectangle background to appear round the edge of the circle. Would I have to set the rectangle fill colour to the same as the background colour of my window? I can’t simply set it to be transparent as otherwise the level indicator would show through.
Your last example is almost exactly what I’m trying to achieve, with the exception again that I need to get rid of the white background round the edges.
Did you use an actual Cylindrical Tank control (rotated) to do that? Or did you draw your own elipses etc? Again I ask because I cannot use the Shape Difference function with the Cylindrical Tank control, only with shapes from the drawing toolbar.
Yes, the last example was three objects: a horizontal tank, a SHAPE and a level indicator. For the SHAPE, I used SHAPE UNION to combine three shapes (a rectangle and two ovals) and then used the difference to get the “hole in the middle” effect.
I am certain you can get the “white rectangle background” to disappear if given sufficient effort, but I only have so much time a day allocated toward forum programming.
Let me know and I’ll post an Ignition window export of the object I created, if you want.
