With VTS and the Display Manager, display building becomes almost effortless. Once you've configured the properties of a tag, you are presented with a selection of drawing methods to suit the role of that tag. These representations might include an image of the equipment with a color indictor to portray its status, a number, a moving bar, a gauge or changing text. Each tag you create can be drawn using as many of its available drawing methods as you choose. For example, you may wish to draw a tag that represents fluid levels using both a moving bar and a number.
When adding an object to the screen, you simply drop an animated representation onto the page being edited. The position of the object can be snapped to a grid and adjusted precisely with the use of the cursor keys. As soon as an object is added to the screen, it is "live", reporting data in real time. It can then be moved, sized, or modified as needed. Each object has access to multiple animated drawing methods, pop-up menu options, and data trend plots. On screen, operators see objects that relate to the devices that they have in the field, and are easily able to see the state of the equipment related to these objects.
Whenever an operator rests the mouse pointer over a graphic object, a small window called a "tool tip" is displayed. Each tool tip shows the tag name and the description, helping the user to identify the object and verify that the correct tag is being represented.
As a means of further enhancing screen displays, the tools of the Display Manager include geometric shapes, pipes and static equipment bitmaps that can be combined with the graphic tag objects to replicate the physical equipment layout.