FactoryTalk View ME - Text, Font Size & Nr. of Digits

[Saulo35]

Hi,

I just found that, when working with Text objects with inserted variables, the size of the actual text on the screen depends not only on the font size (obviously), but on the number of digits. The four Text objects in the attached picture share the following properties:
Font: Arial Narrow
Font Size: 8
Size to Fit: Unchecked
Word Wrap: Checked
The difference lies in the number of digits of the Inserted Variable (from top to bottom, 4, 5, 6 and 7).
As you can see, the Text objects with 4 or 5 digits appear larger than the Objects with 6 or 7 digits.

Here are the Text Properties of each of the Text Objects
/*N:4 {[S6287]LT8001PV} NOFILL DP:1*/ kPa
/*N:5 {[S6287]LT8001PV} NOFILL DP:1*/ kPa
/*N:6 {[S6287]LT8001PV} NOFILL DP:1*/ kPa
/*N:7 {[S6287]LT8001PV} NOFILL DP:1*/ kPa

I am working with FactoryTalk View Studio ME 11.00.00

Has anybody noticed this? Have you found any way around it?
Thank you,

 

[Robb B]

I think you can pad the number with leading zeros, that might force the size to be consistent.

 

[Saulo35]

Thank you Robb. The plot thickens...I should have clarified I am using the emulator "Test Application", not the actual PanelView.

To try your suggestion, I had to recreate the top three Text Objects because I had deleted them. So, I copied the bottom one (the one with Nr of Digits = 7) three times, then changed the Nr of Digits to 6, 5 and 4 from bottom to top. Now the sizes are different than before! Now the ones with 4, 5 and 6 digits appear larger, and the one with 7 digits appears smaller!

I selected "Fill left with: Zeroes" on the Text Objects in the right column, and I can't see a difference.

Finally, when I "Test Application", everything shows up as an interrogation mark!

 

[Saulo35]

Forget about the interrogation marks...I had the wrong language set! Sorry...

 

[Robb B]

I don't think the test applications behave much differently, they're just a pre-created set of screens and stuff to test with. The interrogation marks are probably due to missing data, double check the links. The actual text might look different with real numbers, but probably not. FactoryTalk View Studio is really difficult to get things to work/look well.

 

[slick_william]

My guess is that testing the application (.MER running on FTView Station) should run the exact same as on the OIT. This is not guaranteed, and of course it would be best to test on the physical OIT screen.

One thing I have noticed is that, say you have some text on a graphic screen, and the "size text to fit" box is clicked. You unclick it.

The text will not change right away in my experience (in version 11 at least, which is mostly what I work with). If I had some text that is 11pt, but it was "sized to fit" a large area (say making it around 20pt), and I unclick the box, it will stay at 20pt. What I have to do to actually re-size it is, unclick the size-to-fit box, and then manually change the text size (say to 10pt to nudge it to change, then to 11pt to set it to the final size).

Not sure if this is your issue, but you could test it by:

1) Changing the font size to something random (say 14 pt)
2) Clicking "Apply", the text should change size
3) Change the font size to the size you actually want (say 17 pt or whatnot)
4) Click "Apply" again, hopefully all the text should be actual 17 pt now


A final thought is, you could try taking the same object (say a x.xx format numerical display), and use Ctrl + D (I think) to duplicate it to four or so instances. Once you have those identical instances, change three of them to be x.xxx, x.xxxx, and x.xxxxx or whatnot like your example, and see if the fonts are still not the same.

It seems like an issue that should be easy to fix for a company that charges $10k per year for licenses. I love Rockwell sometimes, but sometimes not so much There are lots of easy things they seem to have missed in their software development. Still, it's some of my favorite to work on.

Hope that helps!