Creating Pictures with Purpose
Whether you are a new or an expert user, iFIX gives you the power and flexibility to create pictures that provide solutions to your process needs. Let's take two scenarios to illustrate this concept:
- Joe. Joe is a system developer for a small shop. He is slightly intimidated by Visual Basic and would prefer not to learn scripting to create and control his pictures. However, he wants to take advantage of VBA's capabilities by customizing a few objects in his picture.
Joe's Solution. Using iFIX Experts, Joe attaches scripts to the objects in his picture without leaving his development screen or entering the VBA environment. Experts give him a simple means to perform the processes he wants. - Janet. Janet is a Process Manager for a large processing plant. She is well-versed in VBA, and is more than eager to unleash the power of iFIX using her knowledge of Visual Basic. Specifically, Janet wants the ability to override the default property settings of a series of existing objects and create her own properties, including complex animations from several different data sources and algorithms. She also wants to add custom controls and toolbars to simplify the process for her developers.
Janet's Solution. iFIX provides the tools that Janet needs to fully customize her environment and fine-tune the control she has over her application. Using the Animations dialog box, she animates certain properties of her objects by specifying a data source and conversion method. Then, by writing VBA scripts, she overrides existing defaults, inserts custom controls, and creates a development toolbar that saves her developers time.
Having all the power you need doesn't mean it should be difficult to use. Developing complex pictures using process automation software was once a tedious and intimidating venture, as it required you to use proprietary command languages and graphics formats that, in the end, gave you limited flexibility. iFIX offers an alternate solution – an easy-to-implement and use, object and task-oriented development tool that lets you create pictures with purpose.
This manual details all of the concepts introduced in the above example. The following table helps you locate specific concepts throughout the various chapters.
