OkiePC Posted February 8, 2016 Share Posted February 8, 2016 I have an (inherited) application with a very busy main screen. There are four groups of objects placed on rectangular "panel" objects. I inadvertently selected and moved one of the panels, and now it appears "on top" of some of the controls. I tried using the "send to back" menu and keyboard shortcuts but cannot get it back behind the controls it was hiding. So, I thought, no big deal, I will just copy the one next to it and move it over, then lock its movement so I don't screw it up again. I made a copy of the panel that is at the back of the z-order, and moved it over, and it has the same behavior. Not only that, but the one that I copied from also seems to have moved in front of a couple of objects. I thought perhaps that there were too many things on the screen so if I put this stuff on a scratch page and get the z-order right, then I could copy it back to the main page. This is where my 2nd problem arose. I can't "see" the workspace. I can turn it on and see that it should be visible, but where? There is only one monitor, and this app was edited on a different PC also with a single monitor, but somehow my Workspace is gone missing and I have been unable to find a way to reset its location so I can change pages to try to fix the z-order deal. In the end, I just ended up deleting the rogue panels and stopped. This is just an aesthetics thing, but I would like ot fix it back to normal at some point. I did a search for the terms "send to back" and "z-order" and read some notes about how panels and graphs are draw in a background task and should appear behind most other objects, but I think my issue is different. Thanks, Paul Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzeoTech Posted February 9, 2016 Share Posted February 9, 2016 First, which release of DAQFactory are you running? Next, as to losing the workspace, see this topic to restore it: http://www.azeotech.com/board/index.php?/topic/3807-watch-window-is-missing/?hl=registry#entry12510 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OkiePC Posted February 9, 2016 Author Share Posted February 9, 2016 The version is 5.87c I got the workspace back. The upper right corner was hiding under the taskbar. Through remote access, the taskbar won't auto-hide, but when on site yesterday, with the takbar out of the way, I saw a little flicker in the lower right when I toggled the workspace and then saw it, dragged it back into view, so I am good to go there. I was there for other reasons and did not have time to dig into the z-order thing again yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzeoTech Posted February 9, 2016 Share Posted February 9, 2016 I can't comment on 5.87 z-order. Unfortunately you'll have to work with the quirks. I can't comment because in the soon-to-be-released release of DAQFactory we've changed ordering so that graphs and panels are no longer on their own layer, so all the z-order quirks are going to change, hopefully for the better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OkiePC Posted February 10, 2016 Author Share Posted February 10, 2016 I figured it out. Actually I figured out how to fix it, not exactly why it behaved the way it did. I made another copy of a panel and then used Edit "Change component page" and set the target page to the main page. I think the pasted copy was landing on the MenuBar page which is also being displayed and only has page control buttons along the bottom. Anyway but resetting the copied component to the main page, and then by selecting all the covered up objects and bring them to front, I was able to get the panels back and behind everything else. It probably had to do with the fact that two pages (Main and MenuBar) were being displayed at the same time. As for version numbers...I read the release notes for versions newer that what we are running (5.87c). At tone time, correct me if I am wrong, 5.87c was listed as the latest tested or stable version, so we have not tried to go beyond that. Can we update them to newer versions painlessly? I do have a couple that are running some pretty elaborate systems with logging, OPC servers, virtual RFScada controls and tons of scripting, but many of them are quite simple ones too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AzeoTech Posted February 10, 2016 Share Posted February 10, 2016 Yes, overlaid pages can be tricky when you are editing. I believe any pasting or new components land on the first page listed. I often just go to the page direct without overlay when adding/pasting controls. As for upgrading: I follow the general rule of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So if 5.87 works for you and you don't need any of the new features, you might as well stick with 5.87. Upgrading is not difficult, but as I mentioned, with the next release, the component stacking is slightly different which may cause some slight visual issue that have to be tweaked on some applications. And as always you'll want to fully test after any upgrades. Even bug fixes can throw older code if that code somehow leveraged the bug. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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