The dashboard editor

The workbench behind Edit: the palette and adding components, the Components locator, selection and the canvas gestures, the property sections every kind shares, the Dashboard area, the connections drawn between symbol terminals, and the autosave behind all of it.

Press Edit on the stage bar of the View page to open the editor on the screen that is open. It needs the role's Edit dashboards permission (the verb is not drawn without it), a screen of your own (a unit panel or a unit screen is arranged in the Process workspace), and a station that takes writes: while engineering is locked or the runtime is stopped the verb is greyed and says why. The screen keeps running while you edit: the components read live values on the canvas, so you configure against what the plant is reading.

There is no save step. Every change persists the moment it is made: a field when you leave it, a switch when you flip it, a move when you drop it. A write the station refuses is reported in the status bar's action feed ("Dashboard edit was not saved: …") and the screen reloads from what was saved. Done editing leaves the mode and is never refused, even when a lock arrives mid-edit; picking a unit panel or a folder in the column, a sign-out, a role change, a unit starting a run or the runtime stopping all end it too. While the editor is open the bar withholds Expand and Full screen and F11 does nothing.

The workbench

The editor puts three surfaces side by side: the Visualization column, the canvas with grid lines, and a tool rail on the right. The rail opens 380 px wide, drags wider or narrower (never under 320 px), and collapses to a strip of four buttons; a press on that strip floats the chosen area over the canvas until you press elsewhere, and the pin puts the fixed rail back. The four areas are Add, Components, Properties and Dashboard. Entering the editor opens Components; selecting anything on the canvas opens Properties; Dashboard opens only when you choose it.

Add

Add is the catalog: a search over name, description and category, a Category filter (All categories, then Display, Control, Alarm, Media, Layout), and the kinds grouped under those headings (Dashboard components has one page per kind). Click a kind and it lands on the first free cell where its default size fits, or at the top-left corner clamped into the grid when no free cell is left; drag it onto the canvas to choose the exact cell. A new component takes the layer above everything else and opens in Properties.

Symbol is the one kind chosen before it is placed: its palette row opens the symbol library instead of dropping anything. The library is the same gallery the Symbols page uses, in a two-column form twelve cards a page: a search by name, library, category or tag, a Library filter (each with its count), a Category filter, and an Origin filter (All, System, Mine). A card names the symbol, its library and category, whether it is System or Mine, and what it declares ("Static", "1 input", "3 inputs", "· 2 terminals"). Click a card to place that symbol in a free cell at the size its author suggested, or drag it onto a cell; ‹ All components returns to the catalog. When your own library cannot be read the gallery says so and lists the system libraries alone.

Beside Symbol, the Media category offers Connection point: "Place a named typed endpoint without adding a Symbol." It adds a free-standing, untyped connection point near the centre of the grid, ready to be wired; see Connections below.

Components

Components lists every persisted item of the screen, front to back, with the count in its heading. A row shows the kind's icon, the component's identification, its type and its place ("Grid 3,2 · 4×2 · Layer 5"). The search matches type, name or identification. Pressing a row selects the component, reveals it on the canvas and opens Properties. A component this version has no renderer for still has its row and its cell, so a screen is never missing a piece without a word; its Properties offer only Remove component.

The identification is the name you gave the component in Properties, or, while it has none, what already identifies it: its corner title, its configured text or label, the address or unit it is bound to, the symbol it draws, or its type.

The canvas

The canvas is the running screen with grid lines. A click selects a component and opens its Properties; Ctrl+click adds it to the selection or takes it out again (the last one touched is the primary, the one the per-kind sections and the resize grip belong to); a click on empty grid clears the selection. Drag a component to move it, drag the grip on its corner to resize it; both snap to cells, are clamped inside the grid, and commit when you release. Overlap is allowed. Escape drops the selection and Delete removes it, but only while the canvas holds the keyboard focus, so a keystroke in a property field never reaches them.

Right-click a component for its menu: Edit properties, Duplicate, Bring to front, Send to back, on a Symbol also Rotate 90°, Flip horizontal and Flip vertical, and Delete. Inside a multi-selection the verbs name their count ("Duplicate (3)", "Delete (3)") and act on the whole batch. Right-click empty grid for Add component, which opens the Add area. There is no clipboard and no Paste: Duplicate is the copy.

A removal is immediate and reported in the status bar with Undo beside it: one level, the last removal, valid as long as that entry is on screen. Undo puts the components back with the connection terminals they owned, and says what could not come back ("One connection stayed a loose end: its line changed after the removal."). An offer whose screen is no longer open answers "The removal was not undone: the screen it belongs to is not open any more."

On the edit canvas the components draw live values but take no presses: the controls answer only in view mode.

Properties

Properties edits the selection. Its heading names what is in hand: the kind's icon and name, and under them the component's identification. With nothing selected it says "Select a component, connection line, point or junction on the canvas. Hold Ctrl to add more and edit what they share."

The sections run in one order whatever the kind, so a subject keeps its place when you change component:

1. Identification: the component's Name, which names it in the Components list, in its search and in this heading, and draws nothing on the screen. The placeholder shows what the list would call it with the field empty.
2. The kind's own sections, in the order Content, Data, Format, then the sections only that kind asks (Type, Dial, Indication, Mini-chart, Track, State, Alarms, Options, Travel, Step, Number, Action, Color and icon, Color and size, Episodes, Columns, Chart, Evaluation, Bars, Slices, Fit, Connections, Orientation), then History, Scale, Fidelity and performance and Toolbox. Each is documented on the component's own page; the controls that repeat across kinds are below.
3. Appearance, the same section for every kind.
4. Position and layer.
5. Advanced, closed by default and drawn only on the kinds that have infrequent extras: the KPI card's Window s and Sample ms, the Icon's Glyph code (advanced).
6. Actions: Duplicate component and Remove component.

With several components selected the panel says "N components selected, editing what they share. Per-kind fields need a single component." (a batch of one kind is named by it, "3 Value components") and offers Appearance, the two layer commands and Duplicate N components / Remove N components. A batch write is one save for the whole screen.

Address fields and the live reading

Every field that names a Logic point is a combo box you can type into freely, with suggestions drawn from the live point list and capped at 50 rows. The list is narrowed to the value category the field consumes (a gauge is offered numbers, a lamp leads with Bool points, a control that writes lists only what can be written, the Button's run command lists the unit command points), and every row carries its type as a tooltip. An address the list does not offer is still accepted, including one that does not exist yet. On a screen defined on a Process model the model's abstract channels lead every list; picking one binds the channel and leaves the unit to be answered when a unit opens the screen.

Once a field names a point, a line under it says what the point reads right now, led by the word now: the value written the way the station writes numbers, or, where reading the text would say nothing, the thing itself: a colour arrives as a swatch beside its hex, an icon as the glyph, an image as a thumbnail. A point that is not answering says so in a soft caution tint instead of leaving a stale number, and an empty field draws no line at all. The line follows the editor's own tick and adds no timer of its own.

Appearance

One section carries what every component has, for one component or a whole selection alike ("Applies to all N selected components."). A field the members disagree on reads Mixed and takes the value you enter for all of them.

Position and layer

X, Y, W and H are the cells the component occupies; a value that would put it outside the grid is clamped and the field snaps back. Layer (Z) is its place in the stack. Bring to front lifts the selection above everything else and Send to back drops it below, keeping the batch's relative order. Move and resize stay per component.

Display size

Every kind that writes a number (Value, Gauge, KPI card, Progress, Point table) carries the same pair inside its Format section:

Reads as

The same kinds carry Reads as: Number, Percentage (the same number with the sign against it) or Duration; the Value alone also offers Text, because it is the one kind that can draw a point's words. Duration adds The value counts: Seconds, Milliseconds or Minutes, since the elapsed value reaches the dashboard as a plain number. A sentence under the fields says when the decimal places you typed were taken at the edge of their band.

Scale

The Value, Gauge, KPI card, Progress, Bar chart and Pie chart carry a Scale section of bands: "A band covers up to its bound, from where the one above it ended. Colour is the meaning: the theme decides the paint." Each band is a card headed by its wording (or "Band N") and where it ends ("up to 80", "no bound yet"), painted in its meaning, with the upper bound, the meaning (Neutral, Information, Success, Caution, Critical), on the kinds that have one state to name a wording field ("names this state", which the component writes beside its reading), and Move up / Move down, which trade meanings between neighbours and leave the bounds where they are. Add band appends one; the ✕ on the head removes it. On the two categorical charts the bands are a palette that tints bars and slices, so no wording is asked.

The Gauge, KPI card and Progress add a Reference under the bands: "A setpoint or nominal, marked on the scale where it falls. It is drawn only while the scale reaches it." Marks is Nothing, A fixed value (then a Value field) or A point (then an Address field with its live reading).

Fidelity and performance

The Line chart carries the section that decides how much of the data reaches the canvas: a Preset (Maximum fidelity, Balanced, Maximum performance; Custom is a reading, not a choice, shown when the fields match no named set and never selectable), Draw every sample up to (100 to 100,000 points), Above it, keep (Preserve peaks, Preserve shape, Average), One symbol per sample up to (0 to 5,000; 0 never draws them), Draw what lies outside the frame, Animate the drawing and Say in the corner which mode the chart is in. A count past its band is taken at the edge and the panel says which count it took. Under the fields an estimate says how many points the station keeps and how many reach the canvas, and warns past 20,000 drawn points or past the memory the chart may keep. The values and their meaning are on Line chart.

Toolbox

Every chart kind carries a Toolbox section: one tick box per button its drawing can honour, each drawn with the button's own glyph, in the order the bar draws them. "With none of them ticked no bar is drawn at all." A Line chart offers Zoom into an area, Reset the zoom, Set the scale by hand, Read the window's minimum, average and maximum, Draw reference lines, Save as PNG, Copy as PNG, Show or hide series, Turn the tooltip on and off and Full screen; a Bar chart or Pie chart offers only Save as PNG, Copy as PNG and Full screen. What each button does is on Charts.

The categorical charts

The Bar chart and the Pie chart share one set of sections above their own drawing: Content holds the Chart title drawn inside the plot (not the corner title); Data holds one card per point (an address, a Name that falls back to the address, a Color that falls back to the palette's turn, and the live reading), Add point, and Order (as declared, smallest first, largest first); Format holds Unit, Decimals and Reads as. "A point that is not reading is left out of the comparison instead of being drawn at zero." Below that, Bars or Slices is each kind's own: see Bar chart and Pie chart.

The Dashboard area

Dashboard holds what the screen declares about itself: name, description, icon, the grid, the startup flag, the status bar in full screen, the visible roles and deletion. It is Dashboard settings. On a screen defined on a Process model the area says so: "This screen belongs to a Process model. One definition serves every unit of it: each unit opens it over its own bound channels."

Connections

A Symbol that declares terminals shows them in the editor as markers on its artwork: a free terminal, an occupied one (with a core dot, painted in its connection's own colour), and one wearing a warning when its connection is undefined. Connections are typed networks drawn on a layer of their own, under the equipment and over the cards, in the colour and thickness the connection type declares; the eight types are Liquid, Gas, Air / duct, Electrical, Signal, Network, Material and Mechanical shaft. A symbol's terminals declare their type (or a type configuration the symbol's Connections section lets you choose), and a network's type resolves only when every endpoint agrees.

The keyboard does the same: a terminal, a line, its centre handle and a node all take focus; Enter or Space on a free terminal marks it as the source, Enter or Space on the target completes the gesture, and Escape clears the source. Delete removes the selected line or connection point; on a junction or an open end it says which line to select instead.

A press on a line or a node selects it and opens Properties:

• Connection (a line): the type's name or "Undefined" in the heading; a caution note when endpoint types conflict or are incomplete ("Branching is disabled until they agree.") and another when a preserved manual route needs adjustment after an endpoint moved; Route (Automatic or Manual), Start and End (each endpoint with its type); the hint "Drag the line to preserve a manual bend. Select its center handle to start a branch."; Rebuild automatic route on a manual route, which clears the bends; and Delete this segment, which removes that line only, never the equipment or an unrelated branch. Removing the last line of a network takes its endpoints with it ("Removed the connection with its endpoints."); a junction left with two sides merges into one line, one left with one side becomes an open end, and a network cut in two becomes two networks.
• Connection point: Name (200 characters), Connection type (Not selected, or one of the eight), Role (Bidirectional, Input, Output), Direction (North, NorthEast, East, SouthEast, South, SouthWest, West, NorthWest), and Remove this point, or Remove point, keep open end when a line ends on it.
• Junction: "Drag the junction handle to reposition every attached route. Remove a branch by selecting its segment; the junction simplifies automatically when only two sides remain."
• Open end: where it is preserved ("grid 12.5, 4") and how to reconnect it: drag it onto a free terminal, drag a terminal here, or delete the attached line.

Automatic routes are orthogonal and take no obstacle into account; a manual route keeps its bends until you rebuild it. Moving, resizing, rotating, flipping or scaling a symbol never disconnects it: the routes re-attach to where the terminals now are, and an attached manual route is flagged for adjustment when its end moved. Removing a symbol turns its terminals into open ends at their last position. Changing a symbol's drawing (Change symbol…) keeps every connection the new drawing still declares a terminal for and releases the others to loose ends, and the feed names how many. Connection removals (a line, a point, a rebuilt route) report with the same Undo, which puts the whole network back as it stood; an edit made to the same connection in between is replaced, and the feed says so.

A connection edit the station refuses is shown inline at the top of Properties and in the feed ("Connection edit was not saved: …"); while a network write is in flight the connection buttons are disabled. In view mode the same lines and end markers are drawn without handles, and an undefined network keeps its neutral dashed style without any warning: you may have left it that way on purpose.

What the editor does not do

It has no undo beyond the last removal and no history of edits: every other change is saved as it is made. It has no clipboard across screens, no arrow-key nudging, no alignment or distribution tools, no free-pixel placement and no per-edit confirmation. It does not edit a unit panel (arranged on the Panels row of its model) and does not create screens for a model (that is the model's Dashboards row, which opens this same editor). It never sizes the grid in a way that pushes a component outside it, and it never writes a value to the plant: the controls on the edit canvas are inert.