Access to Template Paramaters in nested Templates

[DStobie]

When creating a template, its possible to click "Property Overrides" and create parameters. Then you can define a property override of type "By Expression" and reference the parameter to define a value.

This useful as i may create a template that represents an instrument and create a parameter called "PIDTag" and then use that parameter to define an x70's Object name, for example if i use the expression PIDTag + '_PV' and then instance the template, edit the instance and enter 'PT001' as the value of PIDTag, the points x70 Object name will be automatically populated with "PT001_PV" which is great. 

The problem is that if i go and instance that template into another template, such as a site template, i have to define the value the parameter PIDTag there in the new template where i have created the instance of the template that contains the parameter. This means in this case i'd need to be sure that my instrument uses the same PID tag name for every site that i create using my new 'site' template. 

What i would really like to see is a way to access the parameter PIDTag from the instance i create that contains the instance of that template within in, so i can instance sites everywhere and set each sites PIDTag uniquely - where as now i'm forced to set it within the instance within the site level template.

EG, i make an instrument template and create the PIDTag parameter. Then i create a site template that might represent a reservoir site and i instance the instrument template within. 

Then i go and instance the reservoir several times to create several sites. With my new reservoir instances, i'm unable to access the PIDTag parameter of the instruments to set each PIDTag parameter uniquely. 

This would greatly benefit me and others in creating x70 templates.

[sbeadle]

Thanks Dean,

We understand the issue here. Some structured way to expose the parameters would be needed, such as adding them to the list of overridable parameters in the outer template.

The current way to implement parameters in this way would be to set them as overrides in the parent template.

Did you know that you can use expressions with Name and FullName, which evaluate to the instance name?

For example, using element(2,'.',FullName,-1) in an expression will evaluate to the parent group containing the instance.

Steve

[DStobie]

Hey Steve, 

Yes I'm aware that Fullname and Name can be used, however for this to be useful, i'd need to be able to rename a template instanced within a template when i created a site in order to take into account the different P@ID tag naming between sites. However, the only property override i can enable is for the template type (So i can swap it to something else) not the instance name ( so i could rename it to something useful). 

Being able to access the template parameter would be the most useful.

[TAdams98]

Exposing the sub template parameters would be quite helpful!

Letting you build up composite templates from base templates way quicker. Hope you consider this.

[MichaelAur]

Just to add, I feel this would be beneficial too. Being able to select to hand all of the nested template's parameters up to the top level without manually selecting them again would be amazing.