Overview of Animation

Animation is the process by which a drawing element is given the capability of interacting with the operator either visually, or mechanically using the keyboard and mouse, or both. There are three distinct types of animation, although the principle of applying them all is the same.

• Property animations connect a visual property of a drawing element, for example its color, to the variables tree. At run time the appearance of the drawing element changes in real time according to the variables tree and the animation you have applied to it. Most of the time you will be using animation to display the real-time value of variable but in addition it may also be used to display the result of an expression, an attribute such as a variable’s domain, or context information such as the current variable Branch.
• Control Zone animations create an area in a window from which an operator may interact with the application using the keyboard and mouse. Control zones allow the operator to change the value of variables, open and close windows, run programs, send recipes etc.
• Controls and Viewers create the more complex displays such as Trend Viewers.