It would be really nice if the tag database would warn you before renaming your tags when copy and pasting, much like Windows does. Ignition seems to have a fairly smart rename system that finds the numbers in the tagname and tries to increment it by one. This is convenient when making a series of tags, but not so convenient when trying to reorganize your tag structure. I realize not many people go through the reorganization we are doing now, but it would be nice to have a option so it will warn you when you have duplicate tags. With our naming convention it can be difficult to realize that a new tag has been made since it already existed. I am combining two folders that have some of the same tags, so I have to be very careful and manually go through and delete all the tags that are duplicates. It is making my eyes hurt.
I know it won’t be a top priority, but it would definitely be advantageous. Probably should be a setting you can toggle so existing users don’t get upset at having an extra confirmation button, but honestly, hitting enter to confirm should be something they are used to with this software.
Thanks for your time.
As far as I could tell, we do not currently have a feature request for this, so I will submit one.
One thing that might help (in some circumstances anyway) is the fact that if you export tags as XML, then import them into a given directory, the imported tags will overwrite tags of the same name in that directory, which avoids collisions and renaming.
Adam,
Thanks for submitting the request.
Exporting the tags is an interesting idea. I’m doing a lot of folders, which is why the click and drag was really nice, but I might be able to work some magic in notepad++. Will it be a problem if my import file has multiple definitions of the same tag? I’m thinking just some broad strokes of renaming/removing subfolders might do the trick but then I’ll end up with 3ish versions of hte same tag when I import. Any difference in alarming, history, etc, is an acceptable loss at this point.
Is there a program you guys recommend for editing XML files? Again, for broad strokes like adding a overwritten scan class to everything, remove a folder and its contents, etc would be really nice but it is difficult to do in notepad.
Thanks for you help.
I construct a “golden” tag or tag folder and export it, then convert it to PHP, wrapped in loops, with suitable substitutions for the repeating elements. Edit and run to produce perfect XML import files. Works great with transaction group definitions, too.