MES Material Manager | Perspective

MES Material Manager

Use Material Manager to add materials to an MES system. There can only be one Material Root to an Ignition Gateway.

You can add, edit, delete, copy, paste, import and export Material Definitions and Material Classes in Material Manager.

Importing and Exporting Materials in XML Format

Import or export materials at the Material Class level. Use the icons in the toolbar.

Material List Export

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<MaterialRoot>
  <MaterialClass>
    <Name>Chocolate</Name>
    <MaterialDef>
      <Name>Chocolate 77</Name>
    </MaterialDef>
    <MaterialDef>
      <Name>White Chocolate</Name>
    </MaterialDef>
  </MaterialClass>
</MaterialRoot>

Material Manager User Interface

Icon	Name	Functionality
	Add	Adds a new Material Class or Material Definition. Clicking this icon while a Material Class is selected brings up the options of adding either a new Material Class or a new Material Definition.
	Edit	Edits the selected material.
	Delete	Deletes the selected material.
	Copy	Copies the selected material.
	Paste	Paste in place under the selected Material Class the copied Material Class or Material Definition.
	Import	Import a Material Class (and all of the child elements under it when exported) from a file on the server.
	Export	Export the selected Material Class (and all of the child elements under it) to an .xml file stored to a location on the server.
	Toggle Column Visibility	Individually select the visibility of the Name and Description columns in the hierarchy tree under Material Root. A column with its visibility toggled off is not removed. Its text is merely hidden. Therefore, if the Description column is toggled to off , users still need to slide the column boundary between the Name and Description columns over to the right manually to make more room for the text in the Names column.

There is also a Search field for users to filter and find Material Classes and Material Definitions from their long lists. Search wildcards, such as asterisks ("*"), are allowed.

Adding a New Material Class

Material Classes can be added either to an existing Material Class or to the Material Root. 

1. Select either an existing Material Class where the new Material Class is to be created as a child, or the Material Root.
   
   
2. Click Add and select Create Material Class from the drop-down menu. The following editor appears:
   
   
   
3. Type in the new Material Definition name (in the example above, the Name  is set to Yeast ).
   
   
4. Add a Description (optional).
   
   
5. Click  to save the new Material Class.

Adding a New Material Definition

1. Select the existing Material Class where the new Material Definition is to be created (as a child to it).
   
   
2. Click Add and select Create Material Definition from the drop-down menu. The following editor appears:
   
   
   
3. Type in the new Material Definition name (in the example above, the Name  is set to Bread Flour ).
   
   
4. Add a Description (optional).
   
   
5. Click  to save the new Material Definition .
   
   
6. In the Settings section, click Production.
   
   
7. The settings appear as shown to right. Complete the configuration.
   
   
8. Click  to save the settings.

Characters Not Allowed in Names

These characters are restricted because they are used internally by the system or may cause errors when saving or executing MES objects.

Character that are not allowed (with possible exceptions):

. — Period
Used in object paths or property access.

? — Question mark
Used as a wildcard in searches.

! — Exclamation mark
Used in logical expressions.

# — Hash
Used for identifiers or system references.

% — Percent
Used in expressions or formatting.

^ — Caret
Used in calculations or expressions.

* — Asterisk
Used as a wildcard.

~ — Tilde
Used as a modifier or shortcut symbol.

[ ] — Square brackets
Used for indexing or arrays.

{ } — Curly braces
Used for code blocks or objects.

+ — Plus
Used in arithmetic or concatenation.

= — Equals
Used for assignments.

` — Backtick
Used for scripting or special syntax.

\ — Backslash
Used as an escape character or path separator.

@ — At symbol
Used in system references or annotations.

& — Ampersand
Used in logical operations.

( ) — Parentheses
Used to group expressions.

< > — Angle brackets
Used in comparisons or markup.

, — Comma
Used as a delimiter in lists or parameters.

Component Properties

Properties are provided that can be set to affect the operation and look of the component. They can be set through the Perspective Property Editor in the Designer or through scripting. Note that the section prefix is included before the property name (props, position, custom or meta).

PROPS

Component Properties

Name	Scripting	Property Type	Description
Search Enabled	searchEnabled	Boolean	Allows for searching text within columns from the toolbar.

---

There are also numerous styling properties available:

Version Specific

Improvements made in: 3.81.8 SP4 Improvements made for customizing these styling properties: checkboxStyle, dialogButtonUserStyle, dialogDividerStyle, and dialogTitleStyle.

Each property above can be edited for text, background, margins and padding, border, shape, as well as opacity, cursor and overflow characteristics:

Ignition Style Editor

Refer to the Ignition 8 docs page Style Reference for information on modifying the properties listed below.

POSITION

Position Properties

The component position properties aren't usually changed by users during runtime, but they can be written and read in the same manner as other properties, if ever needed. Refer to Ignition Perspective Component Properties for details on POSITION properties. 

New user-defined position properties can be created in this section.

User-defined Properties

Best practice: If user-defined properties are required, create them in the CUSTOM section instead of here.

CUSTOM

META

Meta Properties

This section contains the name and visibility properties for the component. 

New user-defined meta properties can be created in this section.

User-defined Properties

Best practice: If user-defined properties are required, create them in the CUSTOM section instead of here.

Event Handlers

Event handlers provide the ability to add custom script when a user interacts with a component.

Refer to the Ignition 8.1 User Manual for details on using the available event handlers:

• Ignition: Component Events and Actions
• Ignition: Perspective Event Types Reference

Component Functions

This component has no Component Functions.