When you start the iFIX WorkSpace, you are ready to develop your picture. You can start by creating a new picture or opening an existing one.
Before you begin, it is important to know which coordinate system the picture uses. Typically, legacy pictures (iFIX 5.5 or earlier) use the Logical Coordinate System and new pictures (iFIX 5.8 or greater) use the Enhanced Coordinate System. For more information on coordinate systems, refer to the Picture Coordinate System section.
For Classic view, to create a new picture, click the New Picture button on the Standard toolbar as shown:
For Ribbon view, click the WorkSpace button, select New, and then click Picture. Or, click Picture in the New group, on the Home tab.
By default, the Create Picture Wizard appears and guides you through the picture creation process.
If a single untitled picture appears when you click the New Picture button, the Create Picture wizard has been disabled. Enable it by selecting the following check box on the Picture Preferences tab of the User Preferences dialog box: Show Picture Wizard from New Picture Menu.
For more information on the Create Picture wizard, refer to the Using the Create Picture Wizard section in the Implementing Pictures in Your Process chapter.
Opening Existing Pictures
To open an existing picture, double-click the picture from the Pictures folder in the system tree. By default, the system tree is docked on the left side of the screen, and the picture appears to the right of it. To create more room for your picture, you can do any of the following:
- Dock the system tree on the other side of the screen by dragging it
- Set the system tree to float on top of your picture by dragging it away from the sides of the screen.
- Hide the system tree completely so that the picture appears to fit the full screen.
For more information on using the system tree of the WorkSpace, refer to the Using the iFIX WorkSpace chapter of the Understanding iFIX manual.
If the picture you opened has links to an external data source, such as a Proficy Historian server, which is not configured in the WorkSpace, you will receive an error message indicating that the data source is not configured in WorkSpace.
Saving Pictures
In Classic view, to save your drawing, click the Save button on the Standard toolbar. In Ribbon view, to save your drawing, click the Application button, and then click Save. You can save your picture as either a .GRF file or .SVG file. Both file types are stored, by default, in the PIC folder in the path where iFIX is installed, but only .GRF files are displayed in the system tree. You can save .SVG files in any location but you cannot open them in iFIX Workspace, as these files are used for exporting to third-party applications.
When saving picture files, as either file type, you must follow the guidelines of VBA naming constraints. For example, do not use:
- Anything but a letter as the first character.
- Any of the following characters in a name: space, period, exclamation mark, @, &, $, #.
- A name that exceeds 31 characters.
- A name used by any object in your iFIX application. For example, you cannot have both a picture and a rectangle named test.
Also, we recommend that you do not use any names that are common to other objects, functions, statements, or methods in Visual Basic, as you may cancel one of the keywords in the code. For more information on VBA Naming Conventions, refer to the VBA Naming Conventions section in the Writing Scripts manual.
