Defining a New Bulk Manipulation Tool |
DEVELOPER |
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Defining a New Bulk Manipulation Tool |
DEVELOPER |
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After selecting the list of objects to process, select Enter New Settings from the Select/Build Tool Criteria window and click Next. You will now be in the Define Criteria and Actions window.
The first step is to define what the tool is going to process. The Processes drop-down contains a variety of objects and attribute groups to choose from.
The Process Group selected has two functions – firstly it acts as a filter to the objects in the list that the tool will process, and secondly it defines the subset of attributes which the tool can manipulate.
For example, Cycles is a generic group that applies to Function Objects only.
If this were selected, then any object in the list which is not a function will be immediately rejected. The Screen Cycles – Windows group is more specific, and when this is selected any object in the list that is not a screen function would be rejected.
The more generic a Process Group, the more list objects will be accepted for processing.
The opposite generally applies to Attributes. The more generic a Process Group is, fewer attributes will be immediately available to manipulate.
For example, the Cycles group only permits access to the tag attribute, which is common to all cycle types. The Screen Cycles – Windows group however is very specific and this permits access to all attributes which apply to screen window cycles.
This may sound restrictive, but it is necessary to prevent the manipulation of attributes which do not apply to the object which is being processed.
When a generic process group is selected, the available tool actions will typically be extended to include the option to check for specific sub-classes of the group. Such a check will then expose a wider set of attributes which can be manipulated.
When defining a tool which processes ActiveX controls, an additional restriction field becomes available. A specific ActiveX control can be named in this field and, when specified, only those objects using that control will be processed.
Within a sub list, this field will be locked if a specific ActiveX control name has already been specified.
Once you have selected a process group, press return or click the go icon.
Topic ID: 500073