Default colour of gauges and expressions

[Rhomax Engineer]

IS there an easy way to change the default colour of gauges and expressions?Currently gauges have blue text and expressions black. It would be better for our application if all displays were black unless coulour changed by an alarm condition.

As a follow on is there an easy way to have an expresion print two different colours of text for a single input. i.e if the value is true its blue text and if the value is false it red text etc.

Thanks

Derek

[Khalid]

Hi Derek,

There's no "easy" way to change the default colors for the Gauges, AFAIK. I agree it would be nice to have such a deafult setting (INI entry?). One solution that comes to my mind is to use the LKS file: you could create the Gauges with the default blue colors, and when done, open the LKS file in a text editor and do a replace of "0xFF0000" (for Blue) with "0x000000" (for Black).

NOTE that this may be error-prone if you do a replace-ALL since any and all blue color references will be changed to black!

For the different colored text strings, again, this is doable, but not necessarily "easily." By the way, you must agree that a task like this is relative -- i.e., can be considered hard or difficult depending on how used-to the person is.
So, if you start implementing all the tricks you'll soon find everything's easy in Lookout 🙂

Good luck and regards,

Khalid

[Rhomax Engineer]

Another excellent answer from Khalid. Its the exchange of information like this that makes Lookout suck a usable product.

[Rhomax Engineer]

Another excellent answer from Khalid. Its the exchange of information like this that makes Lookout such a usable product.

[reandy]

An easy to create text that is a different color and different message for a digital signal is to create 2 displays of that signal, and put them on top of each other.

To try this out... create a switch.
then Menu: Insert\Expression. Make the switch be the expression (in yellow box). Click OK.

A dialog box now pops up with Digital Properties. Click on the Radio Button for TEXT, and type "Running" (without quotes) in the "On" Box. Select Background Style as transparent. Select Text Color as Green. Click OK, box goes away.

Now, the display you just made should be selected. Hold down the shift key, and drag the object away from where it was. This will create a duplicate of object that you can change. Now right click on this new object, and select Display Properties. Now remove the text from the "On" box and type "Stopped" (without quotes) in the "Off" box. Then change the text color to RED.

It is important that Background Style is transparent. Drag the object you just modified to be on top of the origional one.

Now get out of edit mode, and switch the switch, you will see these messages change, and their color change as the state of the switch changes.

If you wish it to look like a "plate" you can go to Menu: Insert\Plate/Text and put in a plate without any text in it. Just remember to move this plate to the back (Menu: Arrange\Move to Back) so it is behind the objects that show the state of the switch.

Of course you wouldn't use a switch in your real application, tie it to the state of a PLC output or input, or what ever you want the monitor.

The only reason to use 2 expressions is to get a color change. You can use only 1 object to get only the text message to change

Rich Anderson
Automation Controls Engineer
Anamax Group