Ability to have user-defined property overrides propagate up nested template instances

[rlao]

Currently if I add a template instance into a second parent template, any user-defined overrides on the first child template will get reverted to defaults for any instance of that second parent template that gets defined.

For example, I create a pump equipment template with a pump current analog point and override the high alarm limit on that analog point. I then create a pump station template containing four instances of that pump equipment. If I create an instance of that pump station template, the pump current alarm limit override that I defined on the pump equipment template gets reverted on all four of those pumps in the pump station instance. I have to go into the pump station template and manually set the pump current high alarm limit override on each of the four pump instances.

It would be good to have an option to propagate property overrides up nested template instances, as currently we spend a lot of development time during template development reapplying overrides at each nested template level that contains a particular template instance. I know bulk-edit tool can make this less painful, but it would be good if this was baked in so we wouldn't have to rely on external tools which can risk bricking a database if misused.

[tfranklin]

I think what you're seeing is just by design.  You can enable the inheritance but you have to disable the overrides when you create the instances inside of the pump station template. 

Ex:

• Pump Station (Template)
  • Equipment 1 (Instance)
  • Equipment 2 (Instance
  • etc.

Once you create the template above, you're telling the application that Pump Station is in control of the overrides for all objects within that template.  If the overrides are enabled for the template that determines "Equipment" then they'll be changeable here, meaning a change at the equipment template won't push down.  If you disable overrides at the equipment template then they won't be changeable here.  You can then Enable the overrides on the pump station template to allow new instances to inherit the defaults from the pump station template, which are derived from the equipment template. 

Think of overrides as a parent child where the child respects whatever it's direct parent is configured for.  The level of inheritance is fully dictated by your configuration. 

[rlao]

Yeah, I got no problems with the way the inheritance of the property values works. What I am getting at here is that right now property overrides that I defined in the equipment template get reset to some default property overrides when I instantiate them at the pump station level. Very rarely are those default override settings the ones I want so I end up having to re-configure them again for each instance of that equipment that I create in that pump station template.

I agree in some cases, it is desirable to have the equipment level overrides reset at the pump station template level, e.g. property overrides for DNP3 point numbers if you want those locked down at the pump station level. However, I have found quite often, in a lot of other cases, that I want those equipment template overrides to propagate up to the pump station template, e.g. alarm limit fields, and potentially further up the chain if I make a pump station instance in a sewage site template for example.

If I can have some way of having those particular overrides propagate up to each parent template that houses an instance of that equipment template, that saves a lot of configuration effort. I only have to enable the property override at the base equipment template and don't have to re-enable that same override again and again for each of the 4, 5 or however many instances of that equipment that I create in my parent pump station template.

If I need to lock down that property at some point in the template hierarchy, that is fine because I can go to that parent template level and un-tick that override like I can right now. My suggestion is to some toggle-able setting to tell newly created instances of a template to inherit the same property overrides defined for that template, rather than automatically reset to their default property overrides which I have found to be not what I want in 99.9% of cases.

[sbeadle]

Thank you for this and the comments.

I suppose the issue here is that when adding items (whether instance or just objects) to a template, the database always uses the internal field flags to decide what overrides are default. Your experience is that those defaults are rarely right in the instance situation, but it could be different for others.

I wonder whether, when copying an object or instance 'within' a template definition, the overrides for those objects or instances should be copied too.

[rlao]

I think what you suggest would work sufficiently - copy the child instance if you want to copy the overrides, otherwise recreate the instance from the same template.