Visualization
The group of a model that says how it shows itself, with its two folders, Dashboards and Panels, each defined once and drawn for every unit.
Visualization is the third group of a model in the Process tree (Process > Models > model > Visualization). It answers one question: how does this process show itself? Its own page says so in one line: "How this process shows itself: the operator dashboards defined on it, and the surfaces its units are operated through. One definition of each serves every unit of the model." The group is model structure, so the Manage process permission is what edits it; a role that only looks at models or runs procedures sees the group and its rows, but the pages are held read-only and none of the create verbs is drawn.
The group page
Selecting Visualization opens the group's page: the header with the line above, and a Contents card ("What this group holds. Click one to jump straight to it.") with one tile per folder. Each tile carries the folder's icon, its name and the number of rows it holds. There is nothing to add or remove on this page: the two folders are fixed, and what grows is inside them.
| Folder | What it holds | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Dashboards | Free-form dashboards defined on the model: ordinary dashboards assembled from the same components and edited with the same editor as every other dashboard, whose bindings name the model's channels and leave the unit to be answered later. | Dashboards of a model |
| Panels | The operating panels: fixed sets of cards (run commands, staging, run state, comments, occurrences, the channel chart, productivity, the single commands, and any dashboard of the model as a card) arranged once for every unit. | Panels |
The folders stand in that order because that is the order the subject is read in: first what there is to show, then the showing of it. A panel may draw a dashboard as one of its cards, so a dashboard has to exist before a panel can place it.
One definition, every unit
Nothing in this group is defined per unit. A dashboard of the model writes a unit placeholder wherever a single unit would otherwise be named, and a panel is an arrangement of cards that holds for the whole model. What the group holds is the definition; what a unit holds is that definition resolved for it.
That resolution lives under Operate: each unit's node carries one row per panel of the model and then one row per dashboard of the model, in the same order this group lists them. Opening a unit's row draws the panel's cards over that unit's own run and bindings, or runs the dashboard with every placeholder answered by that unit's bound sources. A unit's row only shows; nothing is edited there, because the one definition is edited here. A change saved here reaches every unit's row at once.
The same rows can also reach the View page. Both folders answer that question the same way:
a Show on View switch on the detail bar of a dashboard or of a panel puts one entry per unit
of the model in the View page's Visualization list, named Model · Unit · Surface. The switch is
described on each folder's page, and what the entries look like on the View page is described in
Unit panels on View.
The verbs
The detail bar carries the verbs of the selected row, and the tree's right-click menu mirrors them.
| Command | Where | What it does | Greyed when (situation) | Not drawn when (role) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dashboard | Dashboards folder selected (right-click: Add dashboard) | Creates an empty dashboard on the model, named Screen <n>, and selects it. |
Any unit of the station holds a run, or the runtime is stopped. | Without Manage process. |
| Panel | Panels folder selected (right-click: Add panel) | Creates a panel named Panel <n> beside the ones the model has, and selects it. |
Same. | Without Manage process. |
| Edit dashboard | A dashboard selected | Opens the dashboard editor on that definition inside the Process page. | Any unit holds a run. | Without Edit dashboards. |
| Show on View | A dashboard or a panel selected | The switch that puts the surface on the View page for every unit. | Any unit holds a run, or the runtime is stopped. | Without Manage process. |
| Remove dashboard / Remove panel | A dashboard or a panel selected (also the X on the folder page's cards, and the right-click menu) | Deletes it after a confirmation. | Same. | Without Manage process. |
The engineering lock is the station-wide one: while any unit of any model holds a run, every configuration surface of the station is read-only, and the greyed verb says so in its tooltip. The panels and dashboards a unit is run through stay available throughout; only their definition is locked.
What this group does not do
- It defines nothing per unit. A bench of four identical stations gets one dashboard and one panel arrangement, not four. A unit that needs a different picture needs another dashboard or another panel of the model, which every unit then carries too.
- It does not decide how a unit is run. Starting, holding, stopping and commenting happen on the unit's rows under Operate; this group only decides what those rows draw.
- It does not hold the station's own dashboards. A dashboard defined on a model is listed here and never in the View page's own folders; it reaches the View page only through the Show on View switch, one entry per unit.
- It does not hold the recipes, evaluations, datalogs and procedures a run is made of. Those are the Setup group.