FTView (Distributed) questions

I'm setting up a new distributed system in FTView and I have a couple questions since it has been a while.

Is there a way to instantly deploy changes made on the server to the clients or must the clients be restarted?

Is there a way to maximize (scaled) the graphics on the clients? If we check maximize when setting up the client runtime file, it is maximized, but the actual graphics only take up a portion of the screen. When these original IFIX graphics were converted by Rockwell, the sizes were not changed and we need them to fill a 1920x1080 display.

Thanks.

You don't need to restart the clients to deploy changes. As soon as you save the changes on the server they're deployed - the next time the screen is loaded on the client it will show the updates. The only gotcha here is that some screens are set to "cache after displaying", which means that they go to the server to get the screen the first time, then cache it locally for faster access from then on (until reboot). You can get around this using a Flush Cache command (from memory, it's as simple as FlushCache). I typically put a "flush cache" button on a settings or engineering screen somewhere for this reason.

As far as the scaling I can't be quite as much help - I think there's a setting in Display Settings somewhere which indicates whether it stretches the display (which would be what you want) or just puts it somewhere on the screen and blanks off the rest. I haven't done so much with it as I found scaling displays to be pretty rubbish, and I was better off to get the size the way I wanted it manually.

It must be the caching. I made a change on the server and switched to about 10 different screens and went back and the screen wasn't there. I'll make sure caching is off and try adding a button to flush it. Great idea, thanks.

As for the scaling, I got a little creative and I highly doubt its the most efficient way, but for now it works. I made sure the graphics have resizing enabled and to scaling enabled. Then, in the VBA on loading the display, I do a Me.Height = 1080 and Me.Width = 1920. It scales perfectly and fills the screen. If there was a better way, I'd love to know, but for now we at least have functionality.

Good trick to know on the scaling!

If it were me I would leave the caching in place - it makes for much faster screen loading on large/complicated screens. Just give yourself a button to flush it whenever needed!

ASF said:

You don't need to restart the clients to deploy changes. As soon as you save the changes on the server they're deployed - the next time the screen is loaded on the client it will show the updates. The only gotcha here is that some screens are set to "cache after displaying", which means that they go to the server to get the screen the first time, then cache it locally for faster access from then on (until reboot). You can get around this using a Flush Cache command (from memory, it's as simple as FlushCache). I typically put a "flush cache" button on a settings or engineering screen somewhere for this reason.

Click to expand...

+1 ASF. This'll be a great help!