Texts Part 2

January 2021

This chapter continues on from Texts Part 1.

Gene's In Detail

The gene can refer to values that are fixed, system wide, user adjustable or even user created for your own purposes.

A summary of available Gene's can be found in the manifest.xml file.

To review/edit some of them, right click on a project's manifest Node in the Project Explorer, and choose Properties...

Some gene's can be edited right here in the above dialogue.

Some cannot, for example... if you click on the $watermark row...

You will be prompted...

In this example, the WaterMark features are adjusted via File > Print Preview...

With all the gene's available, if you cannot edit any here, then it means there is another dialogue in Circuit where that value must be set, and specifically, validated in context.

Custom Gene's

You can create your own gene property in the above dialogue. Press the [New Property] button on the dialogue...

The New Property dialogue will pop up...

Be sure to prefix your new property with a Dollar Sign ($) if you intend for this value to be project wide in scope, for example...

New property added to manifest...

You can now assign a value to this gene, and use it as custom means to add variable text into all Text objects that utilise that gene using the Global Update feature.

Child Element Texts

In the previous chapter we looked at creating Text objects with an element of main.

When a main element is applied to a Text object it gains the status of being able to include component data, as well as being able to become the main cross reference for sub-elements, or child elements.

For an example, when a relay coil becomes a main element, we can then cross reference all of it's contact elements with some setting up.

Let's place a Normally Open (NO) contact that will become a child element of a relay we already discussed...

Before we go any further we need to use Groups.

In the relay Text object, as it is a main element, we can assign a property of Group... let's also call it RFWD...

Now with our contact element...

We need to assign a gene of $device, select NO as the element, then finally we can also select the Group to become associated with the relay...

No need to apply any Text to replace the ?, as the Group property will take care of that...

Cross Referencing Texts

At this juncture, the contact is now in the same Group of the main relay coil, so just updating cross references, choosing Circuit > Update Cross References...

Should update as follows...

$table Texts

In order to create a contact table of cross-referenced contacts for our relay, we need to introduce a new Text object with a gene of $table.

Create a Text element with the values as shown...

Choose Circuit > Update Cross References... the result should be as shown...

Clearly we need to tell Circuit what terminals are in that NO contact set.

To do that, open the properties of the contact and select the Info Text...

Enter asterisk (*) 13/14...

Press [Apply] as required to finish.

Now save the Sheet!

Run Update Cross References once more...

That's all for Text objects for now.