Adding symbols to your pages is as simple as pasting them where you would like them. We've even provided a library of over 3800 symbols that you can use in your projects (DAQFactory Pro and higher). You can open this library by selecting Tools - Symbol Factory. This will open the symbol factory browser application which is an easy to use product for viewing all the symbols. You can flip or rotate the symbols, change the coloring, and even import your own symbols into the library. To get a symbol out of symbol factory and into DAQFactory, simply press the Copy button in Symbol Factory to copy the currently selected symbol onto the Windows clipboard, then right click on your page in DAQFactory and select Paste. You can actually put any symbol that can be converted to either a vector WMF (Windows Meta File) or SVG symbol or a bitmap format like BMP, JPEG, PNG or GIF into DAQFactory by simply copying it out of another application and pasting it into DAQFactory.
You can also put symbols into DAQFactory using the drag and drop method. From the Symbol Factory, simply click on a symbol and drag the symbol onto the Control Page. The cursor will change when you are over the page. Release the mouse where you want the symbol dropped. This method is very quick for placing multiple symbols from Symbol Factory.
When you paste or drop a symbol directly onto a page in DAQFactory, you are simply creating a symbol component and pasting the symbol into the component. The symbol component provides many more features. You can select any symbol you have pasted onto a page, or create a new symbol component, and open the properties box for the symbol component to change these features.
You can also load symbols from disk directly into a symbol component by selecting the Open button in the Symbol property. Supported formats include SVG, WMF, JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP. If the file does not load there may be some incompatibility. For raster types (JPEG, GIF, PNG and BMP) it is then recommended to open the file in Microsoft Paint and save it as a PNG and try again.
In addition to a static symbol that does not change, symbol components can display different symbols depending on the result of an expression, or even animate symbols. This is very similar to the MultiBrush and MultiColor lists described in section 7.17 except the Expression is a main property of the component and the list is in the MultiSymbol property. Also, each item in the list has a number of properties. There is, of course, Threshold, which determines which symbol to display, and the actual Symbol, but there are also properties for how the symbol is displayed, including rotation, flipping, etc. Not all graphic types support all properties.
Properties:
Symbol:
The properties in this group apply if MultiSymbol is not used or the Expression for MultiSymbol does not evaluate.
Symbol: the symbol displayed. You can paste into this property using the button labeled Paste, or by double clicking in the big box below it where the current symbol (if any) is displayed. You can also load an image from disk by clicking the Open button.
Rotation: how much to rotate the symbol relative to its original orientation. Only supported in vector formats: SWF and WMF.
Rotate: the amount to rotate the symbol with each redrawing of the symbol. Only supported in vector formats: SWF and WMF.
CenterOffsetX, CenterOffsetY: help you tweak the center of rotation of the symbol. Units are pixels.
HFlip, VFlip: if enabled the image is horizontally or vertically flipped from the original.
MaintainAspect: if enabled, the aspect ratio of the original image will be maintained when the component is rescaled.
Split: if true, part of the image will be filled based on the SplitExpression. This feature currently only works with WMF vector images, which are most of the symbols in Symbol Factory.
SplitExpression: should evaluate to a number between 0 and 1 to indicate how much of SplitBrush1 to display where 1 is the entire image, and 0 is none. The rest of the symbol is filled with SplitBrush2.
SplitHoriz: if true, the splitting is done horizontally instead of vertically
SplitReverse: if true, the splitting is done opposite, so top down if vertical, and right to left if horizontal.
SplitBrush1, SplitBrush1Preset, SplitBrush2, SplitBrush2Preset: the brushes (colors) used for the splitting.
MultiSymbol:
If you want the symbol to change based on an expression, you should instead use these two properties:
Expression: the expression used to determine which symbol from the MultiSymbol property is displayed
MultiSymbol: a list of symbols, each with the properties described above. Please see sections 7.4.2 and 7.4.3 for details on Multi- properties.
Common Properties:
This component includes all the common properties of components plus the background properties described in section 7.4.4. Note that non-transparent raster graphics (i.e. JPEG, GIF, PNG, and BMP) will draw on top of any background so only the background area in the padding area may be visible.
