Animation Points

A graphics page in Citect SCADA is typically made up of several objects. Each point on a graphics page where an object is displayed is called an Animation Point. When you add a graphics object to your page, it is automatically allocated an animation number (AN) to represent the associated animation point.

Animation Numbers can be linked to static items (such as a bitmap or an object without an animation expression), or animated items where an animation expression is defined.

Note: The number of graphic objects that you can use is limited by the performance of your computer, and the number (and complexity) of the animation expressions used. A good rule of thumb is to try and keep the number of objects (and hence ANs) to less than 3000.

AN's are automatically generated for graphics objects; however the AN's 1 and 2 are used for automatically displaying system information such as messages and keyboard entry. In the case of the StruxureWare and Tab Style templates, a large number of ANs are reserved for future development. These reserved ANs are listed around the edges of a page when it is displayed in Graphics Builder.

Animation Numbers on a StruxureWare Page

Animation Numbers on a Tab Style Page

Genies are a combined set of one or more graphics objects. This means each Genie results in two or more ANs and animation records being saved to the project configuration; one for the Genie and one for at least one object within it. The total number of Genies that can be used on a single page is determined by the number of graphics objects that are defined within each Genie, and the total number of ANs and animation records.

You can add individual animation points to a graphics page by using the Cicode Object tool (add a Cicode Object without a command).

When configuring the graphics object on the page you can name the object and use that name to retrieve the object at runtime. See Naming Graphic Objects for more information.

Published June 2018