Designer Drawing Tools

The Drawing tab has the following controls to create, format, and configure displays:

Vertical toolbar—On the left side of the Drawing tab. Use these buttons to draw shapes, add buttons, and create special windows. For more information, see Table 1.
Horizontal toolbar—Across the bottom of the Drawing tab. Use these buttons to group, combine, align, and lock the selected objects. For more information, see Table 2.
Appearance, DisplaySettings, and other settings—Below the main menu buttons, these settings vary based on the type of object selected.

To configure dynamic graphic displays, from the Main Menu, click on the "Draw" icon.

The Appearance parameters dictate the brush style used when drawing objects in the display, including colors. Clicking on the Fill option lets you specify Colors, gradients, or objects with which to fill the graphic.

The DisplaySettings dictate the attributes of the display. Displays can be configured as Pop Ups, Dialogs, or normal page displays.

Like with any graphical object, displays can have varying colors and patterns, borders, titles and more.

One special feature is that you can specify a transition animation to use when entering the display much like you have in PowerPoint presentations.

In this section...
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Vertical toolbar commands
Commands	Description
Selection Tool	Click an object to select it. CTRL+click to select multiple objects (and object groups), one at a time. Hold down the CTRL key as you click each object. Shift+click to toggle selected object from among more than one selected objects. Click in an open area of the display then select a group of elements by highlighting the elements while holding down the left mouse button. Double-click an object to open the Dynamics Configuration window, which provides settings for dynamic object properties.
Direct Selection Tool	Use this tool to select an object inside a group (and modify its properties). Click the object to select it. You can also add, remove, and modify the points in a Polyline with the Direct Selection Tool: To move the point select it by clicking the point and holding the left mouse button down. Drag the point to its new position. Double-click a point to add a new point adjacent to the selected point. Right-click a point to delete the selected point.
Hand Tool	Use the Hand Tool to modify the view window by clicking the display background and holding down the left mouse button then shift the display to the desired position.
Geometric objects tools	Right-click to end use of each tool. To add, modify, and remove points after creating a polygon or polyline, use the Direct Selection Tool.
Rectangle	Creates a rectangle object.
Ellipse	Creates an ellipse object.
Polygon	Creates a polygon object.
Polyline	Creates a polyline object.
Button	Creates a button object.
LabelBox	Creates a label box.
Text Output	Creates a text output object.
Text Box	Creates a text input/output (I/O) object. To link the text I/O object with a tag, double-click the text I/O object, under the Dynamic configuration window select the TextIO dynamic.
CheckBox	Creates a check box object. Right-click this button to access the following tools: Creates a radio button object. Creates a combo box. Creates a list box. Creates a password box. Creates a menu item. Creates a date picker. Creates a date/time text box. Creates a slider control. After selecting a tool from this menu, it becomes the default tool for that button in the vertical toolbar.
Open Symbol Library	The symbol library includes both built-in and user-defined symbols.
Open Symbol Factory	The Symbol Factory is an external symbol library that contains a lot of symbols precreated to be used on the projects.
Insert Image Resource	Insert an image to be used on the entire project.
Web Browser	Creates a Web Browser object. Hover over this button to access the following tools: Creates a Report Viewer object. Creates an XPS Viewer object. Creates a PDF Viewer object. Creates a Page Selector object. Creates an Assets component. Creates a Remote Assets component. Creates a Child Window object. Creates an external WPF component. After you click the option "Creates an external WPF component", the following components will be available: Creates a Pie Chart object. For more information, see Configuring a Pie Chart. Creates a Map Control object. Creates a Report Preview object. Creates a Calculator object. Creates a Bar Chart object. For more information, see Configuring a Bar Chart. Creates an Advanced Pie Chart object. Creates a 3D Pipe Viewer object. Creates a Circular Panel object. For more information, see Configuring a Circular Panel. Import external dlls. After selecting a tool from this menu, it becomes the default tool for that button in the vertical toolbar.
Alarm Window	Creates an alarm window. Position the alarm window and double-click to configure the alarm window settings. For more information, see Configuring an Alarm Window below.
Alarm Area	Creates an Alarm Area control, that allows to view the existing alarm tree.
Trend Window	Creates a trend window. Position the trend window and double-click to configure the trend window settings. For more information, see Configuring a Trend Window below.
Drilling Chart	Creates a drilling chart trend window. Position the trend window and double-click to configure the trend window settings. For more information, see Configuring a Trend Window below.
DataGrid Window	Creates a data grid window. Position the data grid window and double-click to configure the data grid window settings. For more information, see Configuring a DataGrid Window below.

Horizontal toolbar commands
Commands	Description
	Grid definition
	Screen Zoom
	Group
	Ungroup
	Union
	Intersect
	Exclude
	Exclusive-Or
	AlignLeft
	AlignHorizontalCenter
	AlignRight
	AlignTop
	AlignVerticalCenter
	AlignBottom
	Move To The Front
	Move To The Back
	Change Z-Oder
	Resize Width
	Resize Height
	SpaceEvenlyHorizontal
	SpaceEvenlyVertical
	FlipHorizontally
	Flip Vertically
	Lock element
	Unlock element
	Unlock All Elements
	Show All Elements
	Hide Selected Element

Examples

Here you will see examples showing the functionality of the commands of the horizontal toolbar.

The shapes used can be any object without Dynamics, like polygons, ellipses, rectangles.

Union and Intersect

Exclude and Exclusive-Or

Lock element command. : Select both rectangles then click to lock. Now the rectangles can not be selected.
To unlock only one rectangle:
Click on Direct Selection Tool command on the vertical toolbar.
Select the on the desired rectangle and click on Unlock Element .
To Unlock all elements just click on Unlock All Elements command .