Echelon LonMaker - Manual (Page 322)

306 Creating and Using Custom LonMaker Shapes and Stencils
• Create New. The channel is created as a new channel. The channel name will be modified if there
is a naming conflict (if the channel name ends with a number, the channel number will be
incremented; if the channel name does not end with a number, an index, starting at 1, will be
appended to the channel name).
Notes:
• When creating a subsystem or supernode master shape, the LonMaker tool requires that the stencil
has a name. If you just created a new blank stencil, save it before creating the master shape.
• When creating a subsystem or supernode master shape, the LonMaker tool creates one or more
hidden master shapes that are placed in the same stencil as the original master shape. Therefore,
you cannot copy subsystem or supernode master shapes from one stencil to another.
Connection Master Shapes
You can include one or more LonMaker Connector shapes in a custom master shape. Each of these is
called a connection master shape. Each connection block master shape includes the connection
attributes for the original connection. One connection master shape can represent several connections
in your LonMaker drawing, allowing you to quickly and easily establish multiple network connections
with one operation.
You can use connection master shapes to do the following:
• Specify a connection with a connection description other than the default connection description.
A connection description is a set of properties that apply to a connection, such as protocol service,
retry count, priority, and authentication.
• Establish multiple connections in a single operation. For example, instead of dropping several
individual Connector shapes to establish multiple connections (digital output to digital input,
analog input to analog output, and so on), you can create a connection master shape to represent
all these connections. The connection is displayed on the LonMaker drawing as a connection
between the functional blocks on which the connections exist.
• Append a connection to an existing reference connection. For example, if you have a reference
connection between an input and output network variable representing time, you can create a
connection master shape to quickly create connections to additional output network variables
representing time.
If you include one or more LonMaker Connector shapes in a custom LonMaker master shape, the
connections associated with each connector will be saved in the master shape if either of the following
conditions is met:
• The functional blocks on both sides of the connection are included.
• The master shape contains the connection, reference shape (if any), and the functional block
shape.
You can use reference connections in master shapes to create fan-in or fan-out connections. If all of
the members in the reference connection are included in a master shape, the LonMaker tool will create
a new connection (with a unique reference name) when you drag the master shape to a drawing.
If you create a master shape with only a subset of a referenced connection, (i.e. Functional Block,
Connector, and Reference shapes), when you use the master shape the new functional block is added to
the same connection as the other reference shapes. For example, assume you have a reference
connection as shown in the following figure: