Designer Flickering and GUI Slow / Does Not Update with User Activity

Ignition Early Access
1

We recently went to 8.1 RC3 and I noticed some designer issues in Vision. I had 3 power tables on a window that were populated from a Named Query with the polling off. When I added a fourth power table (also populated from a named query with polling off), the designer would refresh and the screen flashed white with every mouse click. The components were able to be selected and moved, but the window would not show them as selected and would flash white then show the new position of the component. It appeared to only be this window with issue. I closed the designer and opened the project again. The issue did not occur until I opened the window with the 4 power tables. When I select and focus on a different window the issue goes away. I checked the gateway and the server is running around 8% CPU and 25% Memory, so it is fine. It appears to be a user interface issue in the designer. Has anyone seen anything similar and know a way to fix this? I realize a simple answer may be to just have < 4 power tables, but I don’t see that as a long term solution.

I closed out of the project and attempted to make a template of the power table. I started having the same issues on the template with only one power table. The issue occurred once I added the configureCell script below. I’ve had similar scripts on power tables before the upgrade, so not sure this is it, but looking for any possibility.

    dataset = self.data
dict = {}
if dataset.getValueAt(rowIndex, "Current Job"):
	dict['background'] = '#00FF00'
elif dataset.getValueAt(rowIndex, "Hot Part"):
	dict['background'] = '#FF0000'
elif dataset.getValueAt(rowIndex, "Critical"):
	dict['background'] = '#FFFFF00'
elif rowView % 2 == 0:
	dict['background'] = '#FFFFFF'
else:
	dict['background'] = '#F7F7F7'
return dict
2

I opened a new blank project and was able to replicate the issue with just one power table. The power table is connected to a named query with polling off and uses the script above.

There were no issues until the configureCell script was added. Is the getValueAt() function causing issues with the gui thread? Is this a bug or is there better way that I am able to color code one column based on 3 other columns without this issue?

3

I don’t see anything obviously wrong with your configureCell implementation. Can you post a screenshot of it in place on a power table? The indentation is a little weird here on the forum, but I assume that’s a copy/paste issue.

4

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image1552×884 177 KB

5

I attempted something a little different on the blank project:

image
image868×866 124 KB

And now my designer is looking like this from clicking and dragging my mouse:

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image1846×976 97 KB

6

Hmm - I’d say to get in contact with support at this point. What you’re describing is the same behavior I would ‘expect’ from a paint-related component method blowing up, but I don’t see any way to do that in the code you’ve written.

7

So, it appears I needed to update the configureCell script to use the second script below and re-open the designer if it was freezing up. The first script created a dataset variable for every cell and even though the dataset was relatively small (3x4 cells), it could be the reason the UI would not paint the window.

> 	if colName == "Job":
> 		if self.data.getValueAt(rowIndex, "Current Job"):
> 			return {'background': '#00FF00'}
> 		elif self.data.getValueAt(rowIndex, "Hot Part"):
> 			return {'background': '#FF0000'}
> 		elif self.data.getValueAt(rowIndex, "Critical"):
> 			return {'background': '#FFFF00'}
> 	if rowView % 2 == 0:
> 		return {'background': '#FFFFFF'}
> 	else:
> 		return {'background': '#F7F7F7'}

This has been working so far.