I am trying to use cell binding to link a set of dropdown text boxes with TagPaths in the TAG_PATH column of an Easy Chart. The problem I am having is that the Tag Pens dataset in the Easy Chart does not maintain a consistent row order.
In the image below, I first created the Tag Pens dataset with the Names row in the order 01, 02, 03. When I re-open this dataset the order is changed and so are the bindings.
How do I avoid this problem?
How exactly are you creating the tag pens dataset? Are you adding pens through the customizer or are you creating through scripting somehow?
How exactly are you creating the tag pens dataset?
I am initially populating the Tag Pens dataset through the Easy Chart customizer. I have also tried entering new Tag Pens rows directly into the dataset with the Dataset Viewer. The row order is still not retained.
What looks like is happening is when ever you open the easy chart customizer and then click ok it reorganizes the dataset into alphabetical order by tag path. If you don’t use the easy chart customizer to add tags then they will stay in the order in which you added them. But if you ever open the customizer after that and click ok then they’ll be rearranged again. I’ll add a ticket in for this and see if something can be done about it or not.
FYI, the dataset rows are not sorted by Tag Path. I tried that.
Make sure in the Easy Chart properties, under Layout you have Alphabetize Pens to False.
Thank you Pat !
The Alphabetize Pens property had to be unchecked, even though I was not displaying the pens.
Never mind that last one. Even with Alphabetize Pens unchecked, it still reorders the rows.
There is a disconnect with the pen order between the Easy Chart customizer and the Tag Pens dataset. What I ended up doing is deselecting Alphabetize Pens, used the customizer to add the pens I wanted, then went to the dataset and manually edited the dataset to have the pens appear in the order I wanted.
One problem with the customizer is if you add a pen it gets added to the top of the list, it would be better if a new pen was added to the bottom of the list. Another problem with the customizer is if you add a pen and save, the pen order gets changed. The customizer doesn’t appear to get the pen order from the Tag Pens dataset. What’s going on between the disconnect I don’t know, it’s goofy.
if you are decent at scripting, you can write a script to populate the easy chart datasets when the window opens up. you can control the order like that and can easily pass in parameters to duplicate what you are doing with the cell bindings.
Whenever I add a pen using the customizer it’s added in alphabetical order by the tag path. Whenever I drag and drop a pen on the chart they are added to the dataset in the order that i dropped them. Alphabetical order being:
1
12 ab
d_10
d_2
d_6
hello
This is when I test it in 7.6.3. What version are you using where you are seeing different results? Am I doing something different than you?
I see what the problem is now. The row reordering is caused by the Customizer.
The first screen shot shows my Tag Pens in the order I want them for my Cell Update bindings to work.
Then I open the Customizer as shown in the second screen shot. The Customizer sorts the pens by Tag Path. I press OK.
Then the tags are reorder in the dataset as shown in the last screen shot.
I don’t think the Customizer should be sorting the Tag Pens rows at all, especially by Tag Paths unless the user specifically tells it to. Doing so causes the Cell Updates binding to be misaligned. Six of my Cell Update bindings are to the Tag Paths. You can’t sort by those since they are dynamic.
Ok, that’s what I thought was happening. I’ll put in a request to see if the customizer can just append tags to the end of the dataset instead of reordering them.