Vision Property Editor
The Vision Property Editor is a dockable panel that appears in the Designer's central workspace, usually in the lower left corner. It displays the properties of the selected component. If more than one component is selected, it will show all properties that the current selection set have in common. Hovering your mouse over a property will display a tooltip that gives a description of the property, as well as its data type and scripting name. Alternately, you can click on the Show/Hide Description Area 
icon to bring up the description area which displays the same information for the currently selected property.
You can also change how the properties are sorted in the property editor. By default, they are sorted with the Categorized 
icon, with similar components grouped under different categorical headers. However, they can also be sorted in alphabetical order by clicking on the Alphabetic 
icon.
Filters
It is common for components to have many properties, so by default the Property Editor only shows the Basic properties. These are the properties that you'll most commonly want to set or bind for a given component. However, the property filter can be changed to show different sets of properties. The designer will remember your selection for future sessions.
- Basic: The Name property and any very commonly used properties. Most components only show two to four properties in Basic.
- Standard: Most of the common properties that a designer would want to use. Few or none of the Expert properties are in the Standard list.
- Expert: The properties that are most commonly used with more advanced features of the component. Few or none of the Standard properties are in the Expert list.
- All: All properties
Binding Icon
To the right of most properties is the Binding 
icon. Click this icon to modify the property binding that is driving that property. You can only use this button when the window workspace is not in Preview mode. Some properties cannot be bound because their datatype is not supported by the binding system. You can still use scripting to affect these properties.
Status Indication
The name of a property in the Property Editor conveys important information about that property:
- A blue name indicates that the property is a custom property.
- A bold name with a Link
icon next to the property indicates that the property is bound using a property binding. - A bold name with a Color Palette
icon indicates that the property is being affected by the component styles settings. - A red bold name with a Warning
icon indicates that the property is double-bound. This means that two things, a property binding and the styles settings are both trying to drive the property value. This will result in errors as the two systems fight each other to write to the property.
Dropdown Lists in Properties
Some of the properties you will encounter on components will have a dropdown list instead of a field to type into. The property description will say it is an integer value, and in most of these cases you can still create a binding on that property. These dropdown lists are an enumeration, meaning each element in the dropdown has an integer value. In all cases, the first value in the list is 0, the second is 1, the third is 2, and so on. You can use this knowledge to create a dropdown list on-screen for your operators that matches the list. In this case, you would just bind this property to the Selected Value of the dropdown.
Common Properties
Every component has properties arranged into categories based on what it has available (i.e., Common, Behavior, Data, Appearance, Layout, etc.). Each component has a different list of properties to effect how it behaves, but every component has the Common group of properties located at the top of the list. These Common properties will behave the same for all components. Here's a list for each Common property and when it might be used.
| Function | Description |
|---|
| Name | The name of the component. This string is used to identify your components in the Project Browser. This is especially important for Bindings and Scripting. Binding is allowed on this property, but it is recommended to never bind this property. Binding it can break your scripts, bindings, and cause errors. |
| Enabled | This Boolean controls whether a component can be interacted with. Most commonly used with data entry components to allow the user to see the value, but not change it. |
| Visible | This Boolean controls whether the component is shown on the window. You can bind this property to show/hide the component based on any logic you want (i.e., security, process step, etc.). |
| Border | The border that surrounds the component. There is a dropdown to select from a list of common borders, and a button to the right to manually edit a border from several different options with a second tab that shows Titled Borders. When binding this property, note that this is a complex data type. It is a Java Border data type, not a string or an enumeration. The common ways to make this property dynamic are to bind it with an Expression binding type or to set it through a script, but using the Expression binding is preferred. If you are using an Expression binding, you must use the toBorder() expression function to return the correct data type. If you are using a script, you need to make sure you use the Java Border data type. See the Java documentation for more information on setting a border through scripting. |
| Mouseover Text | The text that is displayed when a user moves the mouse over the component. This string is commonly used to provide your operators more information about an object (i.e., showing the PLC address of an on-screen value, or telling the operator exactly what will happen when a button is pressed). HTML is allowed in this property. |
| Cursor | The mouse pointer image to use when the operator moves the mouse over the component. This int property corresponds to one of the options in the list. Selecting 'default' means the operating system decides what pointer to use.
Possible Cursor Values | Value | Cursor |
|---|
| 0 | Default | | 1 | Crosshair | | 2 | Text | | 3 | Wait | | 4 | SW Resize | | 5 | SE Resize | | 6 | NW Resize | | 7 | NE Resize | | 8 | N Resize | | 9 | S Resize | | 10 | W Resize | | 11 | E Resize | | 12 | Hand | | 13 | Move |
|
