Note: You should NOT use the Animated Bitmap or the Color Blink drawing methods on pages that will be accessed via a VTS Internet Server, due to possible latency and bandwidth issues. If you must use Animated Bitmap drawing methods, please ensure that you set the frames per second rate low.

The Tag field displays the name and description of the tag that is currently associated with this drawing method.  You can use this to select a different tag or parameter to use as the data source for this drawing method.

The Tag field is only present when editing a completed drawing method object

Opens the Select Animated Bitmap dialog, from which you may select any of the available animations.

In conjunction with the New Color button, this allows you to select a color what will be replaced with another in the bitmap. You may replace up to 2 colors.

For example, several bitmaps have been designed to use Orange 241 so that they may be overlaid with a Color Change drawing method to dynamically adjust their color.  You might wish instead to use blue for the image. To do this, select Orange 241 as the old color and blue as the new.

The tool used to choose a color is the Select Color Dialog.

Together with the Old Color button, this allows you to select a new color to replace another in the bitmap. You may replace up to 2 colors.

See the description of Old Color for details.

Use these fields to set the minimum and maximum animation speeds relative to the associated tag’s scaled minimum and maximum values.  The animation speed is measured in frames per second (FPS).   The values you set here must be within the range of 0 to 30, but there is a way to override these by applying your own minimum and maximum scaling (see: Use Tag’s Scaled Min and Max Value).

 The default minimum value is 0, indicating that the animation should be stopped when the value of the associated tag is at its minimum. The default maximum is 15, which generally provides an acceptable animation without excessively taxing either your computer’s CPU or display card.

Select this option to run the animation from the last frame to the first frame, rather than from the first frame to the last frame.

Select which frame you wish the Animated Bitmap object to show when it is paused.  This can be one of:

•    Current Frame: The frame of the animation that last played will be displayed when the animation is paused.

•    First Frame: The first frame of the animation will be displayed when the animation is paused.

•    No Image: No image will be displayed when the animation is paused.

Selected by default.  Indicates that the tag’s minimum and maximum scaled process values should be used.  If you un-check this box, then you may enter your own scaling values for the tag by using the Minimum Value and Maximum Value fields (see below).  These values will only apply to this one animation of the tag.

The net effect of scaling, and therefore the speed at which the animation will run, will depend on the relationship between the tag’s scaling values and those that you set here.

For example, given the following:

  A tag with scaled values from 0 to 100.

  A FPS rate at minimum of 0.

  A FPS rate at maximum of 30.

Setting your own Minimum and Maximum scale values will change the FPS rates as follows:

Minimum set to 0 and Maximum set to 50:  FPS at minimum is 0 and at maximum is 60.

Minimum set to 0 and Maximum set to 200:  FPS at minimum is 0 and at maximum is 15.

Minimum set to -100 and Maximum set to 100:  FPS at minimum is 15 and at maximum is 30.

Minimum set to 50 and Maximum set to 100:  FPS at minimum is -15 and at maximum is 30.

These two fields are enabled only when the Use Tag’s Scaled Min and Max Values checkbox is not selected. See Use Tag’s Scaled Min and Max Values for a full explanation of the effect of these values.