Automatically Binding Child Assets to Click Zones using Group Names

When creating the iFIX picture for a certain asset type, specifying a selectable group’s name in a certain way results in the click zone being automatically associated with a child asset without further configuration once the exported iFIX picture is associated with an asset type.

In order to take advantage of this automatic click zone binding, the group name must be the same as the child asset’s property name in the GE Operations Hub Asset Model. Each child asset in the model hierarchy is represented as a property of a parent asset. In order for the automatic binding to associate a click zone with a certain child asset, the group name must exactly match the name of the desired child asset property and the exported iFIX picture must be associated with the parent asset.

Example:

For example, say you have an asset type named StorageTank, which has two child asset properties defined in the model, – InletPump and OutflowPump, of asset type Pump. When creating an iFIX picture for the StorageTank asset type to use with GE Operations Hub, you can automatically enable the control card for each of these child assets by:

  1. Creating a selectable group of objects within the iFIX picture for each of the child assets.
  2. Naming these groups InletPump and OutflowPump. These are the child asset property names as defined in the asset model, (not the child asset instance names for a certain instance of StorageTank).
  3. Exporting the iFIX picture from WorkSpace.
  4. Importing the exported picture to GE Operations Hub and associating it with the StorageTank asset type (assuming that the asset model has already been created/imported).

After doing this, navigating to any StorageTank in GE Operations Hub at runtime and viewing the HMI display allows an operator to click on either of these groups of objects to display the control card for that child asset – without the need to navigate to that child asset. This allows control of child assets while in the context of a parent asset.

Rules for Automatic Binding of Group Names

  • You must name the group the same as the child asset property of an asset type.
  • Only child or other descendant assets of a given asset type can be bound to a click zone in a picture associated with that asset type.
  • You can access the control card for grandchild assets and below by using double underscores (__) in the group name to separate each asset level. For example, if the above Pump asset type had a child asset property named RestrictionValve, a click zone could be auto-bound to this grandchild asset from the StorageTank picture by defining a selectable group with the name InletPump__RestrictionValve or OutflowPump__RestrictionValve. This shows the control card for one of these RestrictionValves, depending upon which name you used.
  • You can display the control card for the asset type that is associated with the IFIX picture, rather than one of its descendants, by naming the selectable group the same as the asset type. In the previous example, naming a selectable group StorageTank would result in the click zone displaying the control card for the StorageTank itself when that group is selected at runtime.
Note: It is not necessary to name the selectable groups in a certain way for them to be able to show the control card for an asset. It is only necessary in order to take advantage of the automatic binding feature. If you do not name them in this way, the click zones will still be selectable at runtime in GE Web HMI, but will require further configuration in GE Operations Hub Administration in order to associate them with the desired assets for control at runtime.