Changing Text Field Properties
Text fields are used primarily to add descriptive comments as input, or to define signals to be used as internal output variables within the component. See Internal Output Variables for more details.
To add a new text field to a category page, select the category in the Categories tree and then select Text within the Add Parameter Field drop list button in the tool bar:
A new text field will appear:
Text field properties can be adjusted directly on the category page. Left-click on the [+] box to expand the text field tree node.
The properties available are described as follows:
Description: Enter a caption to act as the visible title of the text field.
Symbol: Enter a symbolic name for the text field, which will be used as a variable name when addressing this field within code. Note that this name must be compatible with standard Fortran naming conventions (i.e. it must begin with a non-numeric character, do not include spaces, etc.).
Default Value: Use this field to add text, which will show up as default text in the text field box.
Group Label: Use this field to organize the display of the input parameters in the actual parameter dialog. All parameter fields that possess the same group name will be grouped together under the group name heading. For example, the image below shows part of an input parameter dialog, where the parameters have all been given the same group name (in this case Positive Sequence):
Prompt Text: Enter a brief statement describing the field. This text will be displayed on the actual input parameter dialog for the component.
Help Mode: Select Append or Overwrite. If Overwrite is selected, only the help text will appear at the bottom of the dialog when the user selects this parameter. If Append is selected, then the prompt text will be appended to the other parameter attribute information displayed.
Regular Expression: Enter an expression for the purpose of ‘masking’ the entered value for this field. Regular expression (or Regex) is a powerful language used for the recognition of character patterns. As the designer, you can use this language to ensure that users of your component enter data values in a specific format. For more details on regular expressions, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regex.
Error Text: Enter a message to be output if the expression entered in Regular Expression fails.
Conditional Expression: Enter a conditional statement to indicate under what input conditions the text field is to be enabled. See Conditional Statements, Layers & Filters for more details.