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LESSON

Selecting Components

Description

Learn multiple ways to select individual or multiple components on a window, depending on your needs and design preferences.

Video recorded using: Ignition 8.1

Transcript

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[00:00] In this lesson, we'll demonstrate several ways to select one or more components on a Vision window. In order to configure any component in Ignition, we must first select it, and there are several ways to do that. In this Vision window, we have a handful of random components from the Component Palette. The first way to select a component is by simply clicking on it, as we see here. When we do this, we can then modify its properties as well as change its size and position, but only for the one component selected. We can also select multiple components by selecting an initial component, then holding down the Ctrl key as we click on multiple additional components. When we do this, we can move and resize the selected components, as well as update parameters that are common to all components selected. For example, let's toggle this Visible setting. Notice how when we select multiple components, the Property Editor has filtered to only the subset of properties that are common to all selected components.

[01:06] And while it might appear that we are selecting all components within a select region, a simple movement action shows that this is not the case. By the way, notice if we happen to have started out with a Ctrl key pressed, notice how the selection appearance differs. This is because we have added the root container to our selection. To de-select the Root container, we can click one more time in the open area, or alternately de-select the Root container in the Project Browser. Another way of selecting multiple components is by drawing a box. If we click anywhere on the window, hold the mouse down, and start drawing a box left and up, we can select multiple components. We only need to go over the edge of any component to select it, the yellow outline tells us it's been selected. The same thing is true if we go to the left and down. Again, we only need to touch the edge of any component to select it if dragging to the left, either up or down. By contrast, if we instead drag from left to right, going either up or down, now we need to select the entire component.

[02:23] So dragging right to left, we select by merely touching a component, whereas dragging left to right, we must select the entire component. The final way to select a component is by drawing a path on the window. If we hold down Alt, then click and drag our mouse, we begin drawing a visible path. Any components on that path will be selected, as we see here. So as we've seen, there are multiple ways to select Ignition components. Single clicking on individual components, Ctrl clicking to select multiple components, dragging right to left and only needing to touch components, dragging left to right and fully enclosing components, and Alt drawing a path over desired components. So there are lots of ways to select, depending on your needs and design preferences.

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