Attribute Customization
You want to customize the display of an attribute of a Windchill object.
Background
Windchill attempts to provide consistent attribute behavior across all client applications. The
Windchill Client Infrastructure provides support for rendering attributes of the standard
Windchill supported data types (see
Attribute Types for more information). This infrastructure includes standard data acquisition, rendering and form processing mechanisms and, re-usable components for rendering the UI elements for attributes. These components honor the meta-data from attribute definition, the configurations defined for that attribute, and the persisted value(s) of the attribute, if any.
Windchill provides multiple configurations points for customizing an attribute’s display and behavior. The Type and Attribute Management utility is the recommended configuration tool. For certain cases, other configuration points may need to be used, such as:
• Java source files of modeled
Windchill classes. See “GeneratedProperty” in
Modeling Columns for more information.
The most common configurations include:
• Constraints
• Properties that can be set on attributes in the Type and Attribute Management utility
• Default values for attributes
Some of the other factors that implicitly affect the behavior of attributes include:
• Behavior built into the infrastructure to comply with Windchill UI standards
• DB configurations
• Attribute validators (see UI Validation for more information)
The framework also provides extension points for customization via the ability to override the standard rendering and data acquisition behavior. See
Data Utilities for more information.
Scope of an attribute configuration
Windchill offers multiple configuration points for the same configuration as a mechanism to control the scope of the configuration. In general, there are 3 possible scopes for a configuration.
• Configurations that apply to all attributes of all object types on all screens. This is normally set in the Preference Management Utility.
• Configurations that apply to a single attribute of a single type on all screens. Attribute Definitions are set in the Type and Attribute Management Utility.
• Configurations that apply to a single attribute of a single type in a specific UI only. Attribute Layouts are set in the Type and Attribute Management Utility or when defining the component configuration using a java builder.
For certain configurations, more than one configuration point with the same scope is available in order to support backward compatibility.
The mechanism used to resolve the values of a configuration set using multiple configuration points varies with each configuration and is detailed in
Customization of Common Windchill Business Attributes.
For rules pertaining to overriding attribute constraints, please see administration of
Constraints in the
Type and Attribute Management utility.
Terminology
Definition of some commonly used terms
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Term
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Definition
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Attribute Panel
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The UI for displaying attributes as name-value pairs according to the Attribute Layout definition.
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Client / Screen
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The end user UI in which the attributes will be displayed. Example: Create Wizard Attributes Step.
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Info Page Primary attributes
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The attributes panel in the information page that is primarily used for displaying a small set of the attributes. This is normally displayed at the top of the info page.
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Info Page Full attributes list
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The attribute panel that is primarily used for displaying a larger set of attributes on an information page.
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GUI component / UI component
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The UI widget (or a composite of UI widgets) displayed on the screen for the user to enter a value for an attribute or to display the value of an attribute.
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Attribute Properties
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Properties that can be set on attributes either in the Type and Attribute Management utility or using other configuration points to customize the display and data acquisition for an attribute.
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