2D Dashboard Questions / Observations

[steve001]

Morning All,

Some observations , questions with the 2D panel

Questions

• Is it possible to alter the grid lines on the dashboard ? - clicking the spanner icon and changing the value from 10 to 5 & then 2.5 did not appear to do anything ?
  
  Is a Grid visible to help with panel layout ? all i can see is the blue cross
  
  are indicators able to be moved by selecting and them move ? i ended up moving instruments to the indicators as it didn't appear that i could select them
  
  the switch icons is it possible to rotate them?, rotate seams to rotate around its axies so you get side view, back views etc. not horizontal / vertical

Observations

zooming out of the panel (by accident) it appears that there are items on the panel ? zooming into the area nothing is there ? - see attached.

when i had selected a clump of 3 meters, 6 text blocks, 4, 7 seg displays moving them, the screen was very sluggish and appeared to struggle.

Graphics card is more than adequate to cover this requirement

Steve

[Steve-Matrix]

You can see the grid by ensuring "show" is ticked in the same window where you set the grid sizes. Also, make sure the colour of the grid is not the same as the colour of the page or background.

The new switch icon, as well as the charts, gauges and the new image and shape components, are not rotatable. These components work differently to the other components on the 2d panel and we've had to compromise on some of the features (such as rotation), although hopefully you'll agree that they look sharper than what was achievable with the old component styles.

Here's a brief explanation that may explain some of the issues you're seeing:

Up to v5 of Flowcode, there was only 1 "panel" and it was a 2d panel rendered using "GDI". This was replaced in v6 with 2 "OpenGL" panels. OpenGL is a 3d environment and although there were 2 panels ("2d" and "3d" in v6 onwards), these were essentially 3d environments. Special viewing and processing tried to mimic a 2d view in the "2d" panel, but it was a compromise and there were certain instances where the "camera" (i.e. the viewpoint of the 3d "scene") was in front of some of the components, meaning as you zoom in to the panel, these objects would disappear from view.

In v9 of Flowcode, we added the ability to display native GDI 2d objects on the 2d panel. Behind the scenes this was a big challenge, but we wanted to introduce better ways of displaying data and to allow nicer panel UIs to be created. As a result, zooming and moving objects on the 2d panel is slower than previous Flowcode versions. But we feel this is worth it as it has allowed us (and you) to develop really nice-looking panels (for example, see here).

We are currently working to have a true 2d panel in future versions of Flowcode which will not be beholden to the compromises we have had to make in the current version.

[steve001]

Evening Steve,

Thank you for the explanation again, ticking "show grid" dose what it says on the tin - opps

My PC is a retired 3D cad machine, did wonder in the back of my mind if there could be some compatibility issues, wouldn't be the first time.
Now i know what is happening and why its not an issue.

I agree, some very nice looking panels can be made.

regards

Steve