Arranging the windows in a project in tabs

Archived Topics
1

How do you arrange some of the windows in a project in the form of tabs as shown in the screen shot ‘Dairy Packaging Plant’.

2

Qurban,

I have to start by saying that the Dairy Packaging Plant project is bundled with the Installer, so you can check out exactly how it works. Having said that, it isn’t the windows that are arranged in any way, it’s the way you set up the tabs (Usually in a separate nav window). It’s pretty easy to do in 4 steps.

  1. Take an image (the tab) and make it open your window when clicked.
  2. On a mouse click event, set a property in the root container (of the window with the tab in it) to the name of the window that is currently being opened so you can have an alternate picture when that property matches the tabs window.
  3. In the action script, set the image to change back and forth when you mouse in and out.
  4. Copy and paste that tab as many times as you need and change the appropriate info.

Now the Dairy Packaging Plant project goes a few steps further than that:
-Instead of an image, it uses a container with an image and a label (for the text), and the container has properties for the text and the window it opens
-The images are linked to names in the root container so changing it there changes all of them

I highly recommend that you check out the demo project in our Unified Installer, there is so much great stuff in there!

-Bobby

3

The install will include the demo project if you start on a new machine or uninstall: FSQL, FPMI, and the SQL database first.

If you need to install it on an existing machine, you can do so here. It’s a lengthy process to set everything up manually.

4

Actually, the Full Installer will add the Demo Project to any installation, but it erases all other data in FactorySQL and FactoryPMI, and loads a new default project into Kepware. You don’t have to uninstall anything.

It is difficult to get it onto an existing install, but the easiest way is to back up the FactoryPMI gateway, your FactorySQL project and your Kepware project, then use the Unified Installer. After it’s installed, you can save the demo project and restore your backups and restore the saved demo project.