Visionary User's Guide Chapter 7: Modifying Object Properties

Home

Contents

Index

Master Index

New Book

The Object Inspector The Object Inspector enables you to view and modify object properties. You use the Object Inspector when you design a scene or data element and want to modify the appearance of an object or its behavior. You can also specify conditions, such as functional expressions, under which the object appears or behaves in a particular way. For example, you might insert a Text object into a scene and want to specify what words it contains, what font the text appears in, or perhaps determine the text depending on a query result. You can use the Object Inspector to modify the Text object properties and the properties of child objects that contain some of the properties you want to change. The Object Inspector has two tabbed pages: Properties and Events. For information on the Events page and event actions, see Chapter 9, "Adding Event Actions to a Scene." The Properties page of the Object Inspector lists the properties of the object selected in the list box at the top of the Object Inspector. Each object property has a property cell where you can edit the value. Some property cells contain list boxes with selection options. Some property cells contain text boxes where you can type property values, function calls, or property expressions, as shown in Figure 7-5. Figure 7-5 Object Inspector, Properties Page For detailed information about the properties of each object, see Appendix A, "Object Properties Reference." You can also map column names or scene parameters to object properties in the Object Inspector. To do this, you use features of both the Data Element Editor or Scene Editor and the Object Inspector. For instructions on how to map column names and parameters to object properties, see "Mapping Columns or Parameters to Properties". To toggle the Object Inspector on or off Choose View Object Inspector from the menu bar. To select an object and view its properties in the Object Inspector Click the object in the editor window, or select the object from the list box of the Object Inspector. When you select an object in the Scene Editor or the Data Element Editor, the selected object appears in the list box at the top of the Object Inspector. All child objects of the selected object also appear in the list box. To view the list of child objects Click the down arrow on the list box in the Object Inspector. Tip: The Object Inspector is dockable. To turn off docking, choose World Options and uncheck the Allow the Object Inspector to dock check box.