Adding indicators for elapsed time and progress to a form

VWorks Software User Guide : Creating forms for protocol operators : Adding indicators for elapsed time and progress to a form

About this topic

To create or edit forms, you must be an administrator or technician. You should also have an understanding of how to create protocols in the VWorks software.

This topic describes how to configure the Elapsed Time and Overall Progress controls in the Specialized Display Controls area of the Form Designer window.

For details on the Experiment ID control, see Configuring a form for experiment IDs and Experiments database.

Figure Form Designer window and the Specialized Display Controls

For more details on creating forms, see Workflow for creating or editing a form.

Procedure

To add indicators for elapsed time and progress:

1 In the Form Designer window under Available Controls, click Specialized display controls, and then drag the desired control to the Form Canvas area.

An invisible autogrid assists you in aligning the control in the form. To turn off the autogrid, press ALT while dragging the control into position.

2 In the Form Canvas area, click the control so that a resizing box appears around the border.

To resize the control, drag one of the sizing handles.

3 Edit the control properties as required. The following table describes the properties.

Property	Description
Control name	The descriptive name associated with the control. The Control name does not appear on the form. Use a functionally descriptive name so that references to this control are recognizable in the Main Log and in audit trail reports. For details, see About the naming of form controls.
Font size	Elapsed time only. To change the font size, type a new number in the field. Any controls that you create subsequently will use the new font size. Default: 10
Font color or Bar color	Optional. To change the color for the selected control and subsequently created controls, click the field, and then click the that appears. Click the color in the palette list, or click Custom Color to open the Select Color dialog box and create a custom color.

Note: To create a caption for the Overall Progress control, you can combine the Overall Progress control with the Static text control. See Overview of the General Controls.

Note: To have one control overlap another control on the form, select the control that you want on top, and then click Bring selected control to front.

Related information

For information about...	See...
Workflow for creating or editing a form	Workflow for creating or editing a form
Controls under General Controls in the Form Designer window	Adding form controls that allow editing or runtime data display
Controls under Specialized Buttons in the Form Designer window	Overview of the specialized buttons
Form properties in the Form Designer window	Setting the form properties
Creating a basic protocol	Workflow for creating a basic protocol