General

All AdvancedHMI controls share a common property named ComComponent. This is used to select the driver instance for the control to use for its PLC interface. This allows the flexibility of having multiple driver instances on the form and different controls using different drivers. This allows both mixed driver types and the same driver type with mixed poll rates.

The controls also share a set of properties that start with PLCAddress. These properties are used to control various control behaviors by values within the PLC. In most cases if you take the name that follows PLCAddress, you will find a corresponding property with the same name. For example, take PLCAddressVisible and remove PLCAddress leaves you with Visible. The control will have a Visible property. By putting a valid address in PLCAddressVisible tells the controls to retrieve the value of that address from the PLC, then put that value into the Visible property.

In most cases you can discover what effect the PLC value will have on the control by manipulating the associated property in design mode. Looking at the BasicButton as an example, there is a property named PLCAddressSelectTextAlternate. Removing PLCAddress leaves us with SelectTextAlternate. If you were to add a BasicButton to the form, then change the value of SelectTextAlternate, you will see the button text change between what is defined in the Text and TextAlternate property. This will be the same behavior seen when the value within the PLC address specified in PLCAddressSelectTextAlternate changes between True and False.