Vision Template Instance shows "marching ants" border when animating

Ignition
1

/Using Ignition 8.1.3, Vision 11.1.3/
I built a 3-position “selector switch” as a template. The “knob” rotates by (fixedDegree * Value)+basePosition. Each of the three positions has its own label, which will directly update the Value if clicked. Clicking on the “knob” itself will increment the value by 1, and perform roll-over as needed. All worked very well, until today. I’d done some clean-up (I’m still new-ish to Ignition and python, but diving in head-first) to the template and now there is an alternating, white dashed border (MSWord used to call this animated border “marching ants”) during the knob’s rotation (lasting maybe 250ms?).

  • All component borders are set to “No Border”. There are no bindings on any border
  • If I click on the knob, the rotation occurs and I get the “marching ants”
  • If I click on a label, and there is rotation, I get the “marching ants”, but if there is no rotation, I do not.
  • If I change the instance.value (template property for the position of the knob and the value of the control), there is rotation, and I get the “marching ants”
  • I have a separate 4-position selector switch template - completely unlinked, but the base graphic was copied/pasted from the 4-pos to the 3-pos - that does not have this issue.

Somehow, I have introduced a graphic bug into my template, and I have run out of ideas on where or what could cause this behavior. I have searched the webs and devs for two hours and I can’t find anything even close to what I’m seeing, so it must be a really dumb mistake. :slight_smile:
I should note this behavior occurs both in the designer “preview” mode, as well as in the local Vision client.

Any assistance would be appreciated!

2

Does your control appear to be still functioning properly? I believe that border you are seeing is indicative of when Ignition has written a new value to an OPC tag and goes away when the value has subsequently been read back from that item. The duration for which this is visible will then be dependent on the tag group (poll timing) and possibly the device settings.

I am still pretty green with Ignition too, so someone please correct me if I am wrong in any of these details.

1 Like
3

Are any of your tags bidirectionally bound on that component? If so, you’ll see marching ants when it’s being written to. When you drag on a tag onto a property, by default it binds it bidirectionally (which imo is flawed since the majority of bindings you don’t want bound bidirectionally, and it’s a destructive binding. The default should be the safe binding, ie read only)

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4

Indeed, you are correct! The tag is set for bidirectional, which is desired, in this case. I removed the binding and the marching ants went away. It appears this is the “write-pending” overlay! Thank you, guys!