What is a "Symbol?"

A symbol is a self-contained graphic object that represents a physical or conceptual element in the underlying application. For example, symbols can represent trucks, factories, network elements, dials or gauges.. They have built-in behavior and an exposed interface, like a graphic JavaBean, widget or control. When an application executes, its symbols connect to real-world objects and are "data-aware"—when the underlying data changes in a meaningful way to the user, the overlying symbols change their appearances. For example, if a component in a data network reaches a pre-defined critical threshold, the symbol associated with it might display a red alarm. Or if an airplane has moved, then its symbol will move on a map display.

Creating Symbols using the Symbol Editor
The Symbol Editor is an interactive point-and-click editor that creates, edits and organizes intelligent symbols to populate a user interface.

The Symbol Editor creating a symbol (left) and in test mode (right). Enlarge thumbnails (opens a new window).

The Symbol Editor offers graphics editing capabilities and is fully interoperable with authoring tools, such as Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, to ensure that the visual elements of the symbol are as appealing as possible. It then adds dynamics to graphics with rules describing how the elements of the symbol will react to data changes. For example, rules can define the alarm conditions that will cause a part of a factory symbol to blink, or how far a needle on a rotary gauge will rotate. The newly created symbol can then be cleanly organized in palettes and reused by the other design tools. By default, the Symbol Editor contains palettes of fully functional symbols for diagramming and monitoring applications, such as gauges, buttons, meters, dials and more.

Features of the Symbol Editor include:

• Import functions: SVG and other popular image formats can be used.
• Direct editing: Creation of individual shapes, graphical configuration, grouping and more
• Advanced objects, such as alarm balloons, tooltips, predefined shapes and stackers
• Management of attachment points and other constraints on each individual shape
• Creation and configuration of custom parameters, providing a clear interface to any symbol
• Configuration of rules and conditions to add custom logic to symbols
• Configuration of interactors to create interactive gauges, buttons, meters, knobs and more
• A palette manager, to organize and share symbols
• Test mode
• A reporting tool, to generate the documentation of symbols and palettes
• A rich collection of over 100 ready-to-use symbols

• Maps and Maps for Defense
  Symbols typically represent either moving or stationary objects that are placed on top of a map at a specific geo-referenced location, according to their latitude and longitude.



• Diagrammer
  Symbols can represent nodes in an interconnected network, such as a logical communications display, a unified modeling language (UML) diagram, or a process flow chart. Diagrammer automatically places symbols that represent nodes, according to one of many layout algorithms it provides.



• Diagrammer can also work with symbols that will be manually placed by the user, in displays called Dashboards. These types of symbols can range from dials and gauges (used to measure business key performance indicators) to pipes and tanks (used in process control displays).