Hello,
A client of mine wants me to mimic some existing FactoryTalk View ME tank levels in Perspective. Current HMI uses Symbol Factory tank cutout animated for level.
I’ve imported the same Symbol Factory tank cutout into perspective (rounded rectangle cutaway), but I can’t seem to find out how to animate the level. There doesn’t appear to be a property that I can bind to. I hope I’m not missing something obvious.
Are you sure you’re in Perspective? If your screens are in the tree node labeled “Vision” then it’s using Vision module. Perspective views live in the “Perspective” node.
The reason I ask is that I’m not seeing a rounded rectangle in perspective. Perspective has its own components and they are significantly different from Vision components. If there is a tank cutout control I am missing it. You can create a “cylindrical tank” control and animate the level using the “value” property. It will look similar to the cylindrical tank in Vision module.
You state that you imported a symbol factory tank cutout. I am not sure if you’re saying you made an instance of a control on the form or you found a way to import controls into perspective. If you added a control to Perspective then I am interesting in knowing how you do that.
I’m definitely in perspective. 
I just opened Symbol Factory from the Tools menu and dragged the symbol into Perspective workspace.
Weird.
I can drag symbol factory objects onto perspective screens. I don’t have a license set up for that so it only lets me use the first one. I don’t see the tank cut out one that you’re using which is also weird.
Either way I am probably a little more puzzled than you are so I’m probably not of much help to you.
Glad I could show you something new 
I’ve attached a screenshot of the symbol in question. I’ve used Symbol Factory objects in the past and had to drill down into the vector drawing to find the right the desired property, but always bound to discrete tags which animated the visibility or color. easy enough, but in this case, I can’t figure out how to animate the level. Can’t bind to height because the object position/coordinates represent top-left corner of the object, and thus animating height results in the appearance of filling top>bottom, the opposite of the desired affect. I’ve also tried playing around with the viewBox and “d” properties, but wasn’t able to find a solution.
Oh! I was on the advanced set of symbols so I didn’t have that one. I never use symbol factory so I’m not that familiar with it.
My only thought and it’s really a long shot. You are able to animate but it’s animating backwards. Maybe you can change the angle property to flip it and it will look right be be silly. I kinda don’t think it will work but if you already have the animation part working then flipping it should be pretty trivial.
I don’t have a symbol factory license so I can’t try it.
good idea. Worth a shot.
You referring to this?
https://docs.inductiveautomation.com/display/DOC79/Tank+Cutaway
The tank cutaway is just a shape, so it doesn’t have anything to ‘animate the level’. You use it to make holes in the graphics that you can then place components that can be animated in the background.
Thanks very much! I’m new to Ignition, and I started with 8.0, but I still feel guilty that I didn’t search well enough before posting. I’m more familiar with Symbol Factory graphics in FactoryTalk View, where, for example, this particular symbol does come with a ‘Fill’ property that can be animated:
Edit: looks like Perspective doesn’t have SVG tools (differencing, etc) yet? Anyway, I’ve settled on a “Progress” indicator rotated -90 degrees for now. Thanks again for the pointer!
Here is a formal request for a “vertical progress indicator” component. I’ve had a heck of a time with the alignment and resizing of (12 vertical indicators alongside eachother) of vertically rotated progress indicators, especially when converting from “fixed” to “percent” mode in a coordinate container.
It's on our list, we've had a few internal users run into the same problems.
Just in case anybody is still interested.
I just took different parts of the existing SVG tank symbol and overlayed them with a functioning cylindrical tank. Instead of one svg tank symbol I have basically 3 svg symbols (tank body, top, and bottom). Then just position them with the correct z-order to show a decent looking animated tank.
left is disassembled tank components, and right is the overlayed display.
