# To UDT or not to UDT. That is the question

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/to-udt-or-not-to-udt-that-is-the-question/32703>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Tags:** ignition80\
**Created:** [February 28, 2020, 6:04pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/to-udt-or-not-to-udt-that-is-the-question/32703 "2020-02-28T18:04:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![nminchin](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/nminchin/32/6911_2.png) [@nminchin](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/nminchin)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2020, 7:48am UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/to-udt-or-not-to-udt-that-is-the-question/32703/15 "2020-03-01T07:48:38Z")

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- at a glance, it’s not possible to see by looking at a component’s properties which UDT instance has been bound to a UDT type property. E.g. in the screenshot below, I have no idea which Tower UDT is bound, I have to click on the binding to find out.  
It’s also far slower to populate template parameters than simply modifying a parameter string value. I tend to use 2 parameters: DeviceParentPath and DeviceName, then combine these together in an internal parameter DeviceTagPath, which also aids in speed of populating values

 ![Screenshot_20200301-181722_Gallery](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/original/2X/b/ba3aeee486ceb1eab95e5b2a35a36af4569686c2.jpeg)

- It’s not possible (as far as I know) to pass UDT instances in using a dataset to the template repeater/canvas. (This alone stops me from using them altogether).

- It looks like they’ve become less restrictive in v8 in terms of accepting other similar UDT types, but that was always a big turn off for me where if a template had a UDT type parameter assigned, it would accept that UDT type and that only.

- In v7 I also found using UDT types had performance issues with large numbers of templates on the page, however as I understand it this has been significantly improved in 8 (and in fact may even be more efficient now than the tag path method)

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