DIAdem Idea Exchange

Assignment channels are useful for converting extremely long text channels with repeated values into numeric channels for saving, but I feel like viewing the text values in table format is clumsy as it requires converting the channel back to text or manually looking up the value in the Assignments property "Parameters" dialog.

I would like to see a native option in the "Format" box to directly display the assignment text rather than the numeric value for assignment channels in VIEW and REPORT tables.

For example, in the Format Numbers dialog, in addition to Automatic ("AutoAdj"), Number ("d.dd"), Date/Time ("#mm/dd/yyyy"), etc. entries, you would also see Assignment ("Assign") option.  This would allow you to display the numeric value by default as it works today (to preserve efficiency in VIEW and backwards compatibility), or be able to see the text directly in the table.

A few challenges:

• I assume this would make the channel read-only in VIEW, as the .Values AssignmentChannel property is today.
• Displaying of text values for unassigned numeric ranges.  Probably just stick with "NOVALUE", but could also do "UNASSIGNED"?

I believe the same visibility could be accomplished through an X-Table toggling between .Values and .DValues, so hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult to accomplish natively.

I've attached some image mock-ups for clarity.

-Josh

I've noticed that the easiest way to relate a channel calculation back to the original channel is to append to the channel name:

iH_EngSpeed_rpm

iH_EngSpeed_rpm_RegX

iH_EngSpeed_rpm_RegY

iH_EngSpeed_rpm_1

iH_EngSpeed_rpm_2

iH_EngSpeed_rpm_Filtered

Filtering for *engspeed, or *engspeed_rpm will return all of the above channels, but in my experience I rarely want to see all the additional channels...With enough channels, it can effectively obscure the channel you're looking for!

The simplest way I can think of to obscure these with the current functionality would be to have a stop character ("\"?) to prevent the filter from grabbing anything beyond that point:

*EngSpeed_rpm\ would return anything ending in *EngSpeed_rpm

Another way would be to get rid of the assumed * at the end of the filter, forcing people to put one on themselves when necessary (but that would be changing the current functionality and would likely confuse users at first):

*Engspeed_rpm would return anything ending in *EngSpeed_rpm

*EngSpeed_rpm* would return everything with EngSpeed_rpm inside it

This would also be nice for looking for channels that end in something, like anything ending in *nm\ rather than anything with nm in the name...